System and Method for Communication Using a Register Management Array Circuit

ABSTRACT

A system for communication using a register management array circuit is disclosed, including a processor, including a processing core, the processing core including a local core register, a register management array circuit coupled to the local core register, and a remote circuit coupled to the register management array circuit, the remote circuit including a remote register. The register management array circuit includes circuitry to cause the data in the local core register to match the data in the remote register. Methods and circuits are also disclosed.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present disclosure pertains to the field of processing logic,microprocessors, and associated instruction set architecture that, whenexecuted by the processor or other processing logic, perform logical,mathematical, or other functional operations.

DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART

Multiprocessor systems are becoming more and more common. A processormay be implemented as a system on chip. A core in a processor may readdata from and write data to registers in circuits of the system on achip that are not part of the processing core. For example, to reducepower consumption in such systems, a processor may include a powercontrol unit (PCU) for regulating or changing a power state of a core.Specifically, a core of processor may be able to function in differentpower states. A power state may include an operating frequency orvoltage of a core. To change power states, a core of processor may writedata to or read data from a register in the PCU.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

Embodiments are illustrated by way of example and not limitation in theFigures of the accompanying drawings:

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system formed with aprocessor that may include execution units to execute an instruction, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 1B illustrates a data processing system, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 1C illustrates other embodiments of a data processing system forperforming text string comparison operations;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the micro-architecture for a processor thatmay include logic circuits to perform instructions, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3A illustrates various packed data type representations inmultimedia registers, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 3B illustrates possible in-register data storage formats, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3C illustrates various signed and unsigned packed data typerepresentations in multimedia registers, in accordance with embodimentsof the present disclosure;

FIG. 3D illustrates an embodiment of an operation encoding format;

FIG. 3E illustrates another possible operation encoding format havingforty or more bits, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 3F illustrates yet another possible operation encoding format, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4A is a block diagram illustrating an in-order pipeline and aregister renaming stage, out-of-order issue/execution pipeline, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4B is a block diagram illustrating an in-order architecture coreand a register renaming logic, out-of-order issue/execution logic to beincluded in a processor, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of a processor, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5B is a block diagram of an example implementation of a core, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a system, in accordance with embodiments ofthe present disclosure;

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a second system, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of a third system in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of a system-on-a-chip, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 10 illustrates a processor containing a central processing unit anda graphics processing unit which may perform at least one instruction,in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 11 is a block diagram illustrating the development of IP cores, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 12 illustrates how an instruction of a first type may be emulatedby a processor of a different type, in accordance with embodiments ofthe present disclosure;

FIG. 13 illustrates a block diagram contrasting the use of a softwareinstruction converter to convert binary instructions in a sourceinstruction set to binary instructions in a target instruction set, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 14 is a block diagram of an instruction set architecture of aprocessor, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 15 is a more detailed block diagram of an instruction setarchitecture of a processor, in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure;

FIG. 16 is a block diagram of an execution pipeline for an instructionset architecture of a processor, in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure;

FIG. 17 is a block diagram of an electronic device for utilizing aprocessor, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 18 is a block diagram of a processor including a registermanagement array circuit, according to embodiments of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 19 is a block diagram of a register management array circuit,according to embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 20 illustrates an example method for writing information from alocal core register to a remote register, according to embodiments ofthe present disclosure; and

FIG. 21 illustrates an example method for reading information from aremote register to a local core register, according to embodiments ofthe present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following description describes an instruction and processing logicand circuitry for communication using a register management arraycircuit. In the following description, numerous specific details such asprocessing logic, processor types, micro-architectural conditions,events, enablement mechanisms, and the like are set forth in order toprovide a more thorough understanding of embodiments of the presentdisclosure. It will be appreciated, however, by one skilled in the artthat the embodiments may be practiced without such specific details.Additionally, some well-known structures, circuits, and the like havenot been shown in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring embodiments ofthe present disclosure.

Although the following embodiments are described with reference to aprocessor, other embodiments are applicable to other types of integratedcircuits and logic devices. Similar techniques and teachings ofembodiments of the present disclosure may be applied to other types ofcircuits or semiconductor devices that may benefit from higher pipelinethroughput and improved performance. The teachings of embodiments of thepresent disclosure are applicable to any processor or machine thatperforms data manipulations. However, the embodiments are not limited toprocessors or machines that perform 512-bit, 256-bit, 128-bit, 64-bit,32-bit, or 16-bit data operations and may be applied to any processorand machine in which manipulation or management of data may beperformed. In addition, the following description provides examples, andthe accompanying drawings show various examples for the purposes ofillustration. However, these examples should not be construed in alimiting sense as they are merely intended to provide examples ofembodiments of the present disclosure rather than to provide anexhaustive list of all possible implementations of embodiments of thepresent disclosure.

Although the below examples describe instruction handling anddistribution in the context of execution units and logic circuits, otherembodiments of the present disclosure may be accomplished by way of adata or instructions stored on a machine-readable, tangible medium,which when performed by a machine cause the machine to perform functionsconsistent with at least one embodiment of the disclosure. In oneembodiment, functions associated with embodiments of the presentdisclosure are embodied in machine-executable instructions. Theinstructions may be used to cause a general-purpose or special-purposeprocessor that may be programmed with the instructions to perform theoperations of the present disclosure. Embodiments of the presentdisclosure may be provided as a computer program product or softwarewhich may include a machine or computer-readable medium having storedthereon instructions which may be used to program a computer (or otherelectronic devices) to perform one or more operations according toembodiments of the present disclosure. Furthermore, operations ofembodiments of the present disclosure might be performed by specifichardware components that contain fixed-function logic for performing theoperations, or by any combination of programmed computer components andfixed-function hardware components.

Instructions used to program logic to perform embodiments of the presentdisclosure may be stored within a memory in the system, such as DRAM,cache, flash memory, or other storage. Furthermore, the instructions maybe distributed via a network or by way of other computer-readable media.Thus a machine-readable medium may include any mechanism for storing ortransmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., acomputer), but is not limited to, floppy diskettes, optical disks,Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory (CD-ROMs), and magneto-optical disks,Read-Only Memory (ROMs), Random Access Memory (RAM), ErasableProgrammable Read-Only Memory (EPROM), Electrically ErasableProgrammable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM), magnetic or optical cards, flashmemory, or a tangible, machine-readable storage used in the transmissionof information over the Internet via electrical, optical, acoustical orother forms of propagated signals (e.g., carrier waves, infraredsignals, digital signals, etc.). Accordingly, the computer-readablemedium may include any type of tangible machine-readable medium suitablefor storing or transmitting electronic instructions or information in aform readable by a machine (e.g., a computer).

A design may go through various stages, from creation to simulation tofabrication. Data representing a design may represent the design in anumber of manners. First, as may be useful in simulations, the hardwaremay be represented using a hardware description language or anotherfunctional description language. Additionally, a circuit level modelwith logic and/or transistor gates may be produced at some stages of thedesign process. Furthermore, designs, at some stage, may reach a levelof data representing the physical placement of various devices in thehardware model. In cases wherein some semiconductor fabricationtechniques are used, the data representing the hardware model may be thedata specifying the presence or absence of various features on differentmask layers for masks used to produce the integrated circuit. In anyrepresentation of the design, the data may be stored in any form of amachine-readable medium. A memory or a magnetic or optical storage suchas a disc may be the machine-readable medium to store informationtransmitted via optical or electrical wave modulated or otherwisegenerated to transmit such information. When an electrical carrier waveindicating or carrying the code or design is transmitted, to the extentthat copying, buffering, or retransmission of the electrical signal isperformed, a new copy may be made. Thus, a communication provider or anetwork provider may store on a tangible, machine-readable medium, atleast temporarily, an article, such as information encoded into acarrier wave, embodying techniques of embodiments of the presentdisclosure.

In modern processors, a number of different execution units may be usedto process and execute a variety of code and instructions. Someinstructions may be quicker to complete while others may take a numberof clock cycles to complete. The faster the throughput of instructions,the better the overall performance of the processor. Thus it would beadvantageous to have as many instructions execute as fast as possible.However, there may be certain instructions that have greater complexityand require more in terms of execution time and processor resources,such as floating point instructions, load/store operations, data moves,etc.

As more computer systems are used in internet, text, and multimediaapplications, additional processor support has been introduced overtime. In one embodiment, an instruction set may be associated with oneor more computer architectures, including data types, instructions,register architecture, addressing modes, memory architecture, interruptand exception handling, and external input and output (I/O).

In one embodiment, the instruction set architecture (ISA) may beimplemented by one or more micro-architectures, which may includeprocessor logic and circuits used to implement one or more instructionsets. Accordingly, processors with different micro-architectures mayshare at least a portion of a common instruction set. For example,Intel® Pentium 4 processors, Intel® Core™ processors, and processorsfrom Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. of Sunnyvale Calif. implement nearlyidentical versions of the x86 instruction set (with some extensions thathave been added with newer versions), but have different internaldesigns. Similarly, processors designed by other processor developmentcompanies, such as ARM Holdings, Ltd., MIPS, or their licensees oradopters, may share at least a portion of a common instruction set, butmay include different processor designs. For example, the same registerarchitecture of the ISA may be implemented in different ways indifferent micro-architectures using new or well-known techniques,including dedicated physical registers, one or more dynamicallyallocated physical registers using a register renaming mechanism (e.g.,the use of a Register Alias Table (RAT), a Reorder Buffer (ROB) and aretirement register file. In one embodiment, registers may include oneor more registers, register architectures, register files, or otherregister sets that may or may not be addressable by a softwareprogrammer.

An instruction may include one or more instruction formats. In oneembodiment, an instruction format may indicate various fields (number ofbits, location of bits, etc.) to specify, among other things, theoperation to be performed and the operands on which that operation willbe performed. In a further embodiment, some instruction formats may befurther defined by instruction templates (or sub-formats). For example,the instruction templates of a given instruction format may be definedto have different subsets of the instruction format's fields and/ordefined to have a given field interpreted differently. In oneembodiment, an instruction may be expressed using an instruction format(and, if defined, in a given one of the instruction templates of thatinstruction format) and specifies or indicates the operation and theoperands upon which the operation will operate.

Scientific, financial, auto-vectorized general purpose, RMS(recognition, mining, and synthesis), and visual and multimediaapplications (e.g., 2D/3D graphics, image processing, videocompression/decompression, voice recognition algorithms and audiomanipulation) may require the same operation to be performed on a largenumber of data items. In one embodiment, Single Instruction MultipleData (SIMD) refers to a type of instruction that causes a processor toperform an operation on multiple data elements. SIMD technology may beused in processors that may logically divide the bits in a register intoa number of fixed-sized or variable-sized data elements, each of whichrepresents a separate value. For example, in one embodiment, the bits ina 64-bit register may be organized as a source operand containing fourseparate 16-bit data elements, each of which represents a separate16-bit value. This type of data may be referred to as ‘packed’ data typeor ‘vector’ data type, and operands of this data type may be referred toas packed data operands or vector operands. In one embodiment, a packeddata item or vector may be a sequence of packed data elements storedwithin a single register, and a packed data operand or a vector operandmay a source or destination operand of a SIMD instruction (or ‘packeddata instruction’ or a ‘vector instruction’). In one embodiment, a SIMDinstruction specifies a single vector operation to be performed on twosource vector operands to generate a destination vector operand (alsoreferred to as a result vector operand) of the same or different size,with the same or different number of data elements, and in the same ordifferent data element order.

SIMD technology, such as that employed by the Intel® CoreTM processorshaving an instruction set including x86, MMX™, Streaming SIMD Extensions(SSE), SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, and SSE4.2 instructions, ARM processors, suchas the ARM Cortex® family of processors having an instruction setincluding the Vector Floating Point (VFP) and/or NEON instructions, andMIPS processors, such as the Loongson family of processors developed bythe Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy ofSciences, has enabled a significant improvement in applicationperformance (Core™ and MMX™ are registered trademarks or trademarks ofIntel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif.).

In one embodiment, destination and source registers/data may be genericterms to represent the source and destination of the corresponding dataor operation. In some embodiments, they may be implemented by registers,memory, or other storage areas having other names or functions thanthose depicted. For example, in one embodiment, “DEST1” may be atemporary storage register or other storage area, whereas “SRC1” and“SRC2” may be a first and second source storage register or otherstorage area, and so forth. In other embodiments, two or more of the SRCand DEST storage areas may correspond to different data storage elementswithin the same storage area (e.g., a SIMD register). In one embodiment,one of the source registers may also act as a destination register by,for example, writing back the result of an operation performed on thefirst and second source data to one of the two source registers servingas a destination registers.

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system formed with aprocessor that may include execution units to execute an instruction, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. System 100 mayinclude a component, such as a processor 102 to employ execution unitsincluding logic to perform algorithms for process data, in accordancewith the present disclosure, such as in the embodiment described herein.System 100 may be representative of processing systems based on thePENTIUM® III, PENTIUM® 4, Xeon™, Itanium®, XScale™ and/or StrongARM™microprocessors available from Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif.,although other systems (including PCs having other microprocessors,engineering workstations, set-top boxes and the like) may also be used.In one embodiment, sample system 100 may execute a version of theWINDOWS™ operating system available from Microsoft Corporation ofRedmond, Wash., although other operating systems (UNIX and Linux forexample), embedded software, and/or graphical user interfaces, may alsobe used. Thus, embodiments of the present disclosure are not limited toany specific combination of hardware circuitry and software.

Embodiments are not limited to computer systems. Embodiments of thepresent disclosure may be used in other devices such as handheld devicesand embedded applications. Some examples of handheld devices includecellular phones, Internet Protocol devices, digital cameras, personaldigital assistants (PDAs), and handheld PCs. Embedded applications mayinclude a micro controller, a digital signal processor (DSP), system ona chip, network computers (NetPC), set-top boxes, network hubs, widearea network (WAN) switches, or any other system that may perform one ormore instructions in accordance with at least one embodiment.

Computer system 100 may include a processor 102 that may include one ormore execution units 108 to perform an algorithm to perform at least oneinstruction in accordance with one embodiment of the present disclosure.One embodiment may be described in the context of a single processordesktop or server system, but other embodiments may be included in amultiprocessor system. System 100 may be an example of a ‘hub’ systemarchitecture. System 100 may include a processor 102 for processing datasignals. Processor 102 may include a complex instruction set computer(CISC) microprocessor, a reduced instruction set computing (RISC)microprocessor, a very long instruction word (VLIW) microprocessor, aprocessor implementing a combination of instruction sets, or any otherprocessor device, such as a digital signal processor, for example. Inone embodiment, processor 102 may be coupled to a processor bus 110 thatmay transmit data signals between processor 102 and other components insystem 100. The elements of system 100 may perform conventionalfunctions that are well known to those familiar with the art.

In one embodiment, processor 102 may include a Level 1 (L1) internalcache memory 104. Depending on the architecture, the processor 102 mayhave a single internal cache or multiple levels of internal cache. Inanother embodiment, the cache memory may reside external to processor102. Other embodiments may also include a combination of both internaland external caches depending on the particular implementation andneeds. Register file 106 may store different types of data in variousregisters including integer registers, floating point registers, statusregisters, and instruction pointer register.

Execution unit 108, including logic to perform integer and floatingpoint operations, also resides in processor 102. Processor 102 may alsoinclude a microcode (ucode) ROM that stores microcode for certainmacroinstructions. In one embodiment, execution unit 108 may includelogic to handle a packed instruction set 109. By including the packedinstruction set 109 in the instruction set of a general-purposeprocessor 102, along with associated circuitry to execute theinstructions, the operations used by many multimedia applications may beperformed using packed data in a general-purpose processor 102. Thus,many multimedia applications may be accelerated and executed moreefficiently by using the full width of a processor's data bus forperforming operations on packed data. This may eliminate the need totransfer smaller units of data across the processor's data bus toperform one or more operations one data element at a time.

Embodiments of an execution unit 108 may also be used in microcontrollers, embedded processors, graphics devices, DSPs, and othertypes of logic circuits. System 100 may include a memory 120. Memory 120may be implemented as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) device, astatic random access memory (SRAM) device, flash memory device, or othermemory device. Memory 120 may store instructions 119 and/or data 121represented by data signals that may be executed by processor 102.

A system logic chip 116 may be coupled to processor bus 110 and memory120. System logic chip 116 may include a memory controller hub (MCH).Processor 102 may communicate with MCH 116 via a processor bus 110. MCH116 may provide a high bandwidth memory path 118 to memory 120 forstorage of instructions 119 and data 121 and for storage of graphicscommands, data and textures. MCH 116 may direct data signals betweenprocessor 102, memory 120, and other components in system 100 and tobridge the data signals between processor bus 110, memory 120, andsystem I/O 122. In some embodiments, the system logic chip 116 mayprovide a graphics port for coupling to a graphics controller 112. MCH116 may be coupled to memory 120 through a memory interface 118.Graphics card 112 may be coupled to MCH 116 through an AcceleratedGraphics Port (AGP) interconnect 114.

System 100 may use a proprietary hub interface bus 122 to couple MCH 116to I/O controller hub (ICH) 130. In one embodiment, ICH 130 may providedirect connections to some I/O devices via a local I/O bus. The localI/O bus may include a high-speed I/O bus for connecting peripherals tomemory 120, chipset, and processor 102. Examples may include the audiocontroller 129, firmware hub (flash BIOS) 128, wireless transceiver 126,data storage 124, legacy I/O controller 123 containing user inputinterface 125 (which may include a keyboard interface), a serialexpansion port 127 such as Universal Serial Bus (USB), and a networkcontroller 134. Data storage device 124 may comprise a hard disk drive,a floppy disk drive, a CD-ROM device, a flash memory device, or othermass storage device.

For another embodiment of a system, an instruction in accordance withone embodiment may be used with a system on a chip. One embodiment of asystem on a chip comprises of a processor and a memory. The memory forone such system may include a flash memory. The flash memory may belocated on the same die as the processor and other system components.Additionally, other logic blocks such as a memory controller or graphicscontroller may also be located on a system on a chip.

FIG. 1B illustrates a data processing system 140 which implements theprinciples of embodiments of the present disclosure. It will be readilyappreciated by one of skill in the art that the embodiments describedherein may operate with alternative processing systems without departurefrom the scope of embodiments of the disclosure.

Computer system 140 comprises a processing core 159 for performing atleast one instruction in accordance with one embodiment. In oneembodiment, processing core 159 represents a processing unit of any typeof architecture, including but not limited to a CISC, a RISC or a VLIWtype architecture. Processing core 159 may also be suitable formanufacture in one or more process technologies and by being representedon a machine-readable media in sufficient detail, may be suitable tofacilitate said manufacture.

Processing core 159 comprises an execution unit 142, a set of registerfiles 145, and a decoder 144. Processing core 159 may also includeadditional circuitry (not shown) which may be unnecessary to theunderstanding of embodiments of the present disclosure. Execution unit142 may execute instructions received by processing core 159. Inaddition to performing typical processor instructions, execution unit142 may perform instructions in packed instruction set 143 forperforming operations on packed data formats. Packed instruction set 143may include instructions for performing embodiments of the disclosureand other packed instructions. Execution unit 142 may be coupled toregister file 145 by an internal bus. Register file 145 may represent astorage area on processing core 159 for storing information, includingdata. As previously mentioned, it is understood that the storage areamay store the packed data might not be critical. Execution unit 142 maybe coupled to decoder 144. Decoder 144 may decode instructions receivedby processing core 159 into control signals and/or microcode entrypoints. In response to these control signals and/or microcode entrypoints, execution unit 142 performs the appropriate operations. In oneembodiment, the decoder may interpret the opcode of the instruction,which will indicate what operation should be performed on thecorresponding data indicated within the instruction.

Processing core 159 may be coupled with bus 141 for communicating withvarious other system devices, which may include but are not limited to,for example, synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) control146, static random access memory (SRAM) control 147, burst flash memoryinterface 148, personal computer memory card international association(PCMCIA)/compact flash (CF) card control 149, liquid crystal display(LCD) control 150, direct memory access (DMA) controller 151, andalternative bus master interface 152. In one embodiment, data processingsystem 140 may also comprise an I/O bridge 154 for communicating withvarious I/O devices via an I/O bus 153. Such I/O devices may include butare not limited to, for example, universal asynchronousreceiver/transmitter (UART) 155, universal serial bus (USB) 156,Bluetooth wireless UART 157 and I/O expansion interface 158.

One embodiment of data processing system 140 provides for mobile,network and/or wireless communications and a processing core 159 thatmay perform SIMD operations including a text string comparisonoperation. Processing core 159 may be programmed with various audio,video, imaging and communications algorithms including discretetransformations such as a Walsh-Hadamard transform, a fast Fouriertransform (FFT), a discrete cosine transform (DCT), and their respectiveinverse transforms; compression/decompression techniques such as colorspace transformation, video encode motion estimation or video decodemotion compensation; and modulation/demodulation (MODEM) functions suchas pulse coded modulation (PCM).

FIG. 1C illustrates other embodiments of a data processing system thatperforms SIMD text string comparison operations. In one embodiment, dataprocessing system 160 may include a main processor 166, a SIMDcoprocessor 161, a cache memory 167, and an input/output system 168.Input/output system 168 may optionally be coupled to a wirelessinterface 169. SIMD coprocessor 161 may perform operations includinginstructions in accordance with one embodiment. In one embodiment,processing core 170 may be suitable for manufacture in one or moreprocess technologies and by being represented on a machine-readablemedia in sufficient detail, may be suitable to facilitate themanufacture of all or part of data processing system 160 includingprocessing core 170.

In one embodiment, SIMD coprocessor 161 comprises an execution unit 162and a set of register files 164. One embodiment of main processor 166comprises a decoder 165 to recognize instructions of instruction set 163including instructions in accordance with one embodiment for executionby execution unit 162. In other embodiments, SIMD coprocessor 161 alsocomprises at least part of decoder 165 (shown as 165B) to decodeinstructions of instruction set 163. Processing core 170 may alsoinclude additional circuitry (not shown) which may be unnecessary to theunderstanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.

In operation, main processor 166 executes a stream of data processinginstructions that control data processing operations of a general typeincluding interactions with cache memory 167, and input/output system168. Embedded within the stream of data processing instructions may beSIMD coprocessor instructions. Decoder 165 of main processor 166recognizes these SIMD coprocessor instructions as being of a type thatshould be executed by an attached SIMD coprocessor 161. Accordingly,main processor 166 issues these SIMD coprocessor instructions (orcontrol signals representing SIMD coprocessor instructions) on thecoprocessor bus 171. From coprocessor bus 171, these instructions may bereceived by any attached SIMD coprocessors. In this case, SIMDcoprocessor 161 may accept and execute any received SIMD coprocessorinstructions intended for it.

Data may be received via wireless interface 169 for processing by theSIMD coprocessor instructions. For one example, voice communication maybe received in the form of a digital signal, which may be processed bythe SIMD coprocessor instructions to regenerate digital audio samplesrepresentative of the voice communications. For another example,compressed audio and/or video may be received in the form of a digitalbit stream, which may be processed by the SIMD coprocessor instructionsto regenerate digital audio samples and/or motion video frames. In oneembodiment of processing core 170, main processor 166, and a SIMDcoprocessor 161 may be integrated into a single processing core 170comprising an execution unit 162, a set of register files 164, and adecoder 165 to recognize instructions of instruction set 163 includinginstructions in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the micro-architecture for a processor 200that may include logic circuits to perform instructions, in accordancewith embodiments of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, aninstruction in accordance with one embodiment may be implemented tooperate on data elements having sizes of byte, word, doubleword,quadword, etc., as well as datatypes, such as single and doubleprecision integer and floating point datatypes. In one embodiment,in-order front end 201 may implement a part of processor 200 that mayfetch instructions to be executed and prepares the instructions to beused later in the processor pipeline. Front end 201 may include severalunits. In one embodiment, instruction prefetcher 226 fetchesinstructions from memory and feeds the instructions to an instructiondecoder 228 which in turn decodes or interprets the instructions. Forexample, in one embodiment, the decoder decodes a received instructioninto one or more operations called “micro-instructions” or“micro-operations” (also called micro op or uops) that the machine mayexecute. In other embodiments, the decoder parses the instruction intoan opcode and corresponding data and control fields that may be used bythe micro-architecture to perform operations in accordance with oneembodiment. In one embodiment, trace cache 230 may assemble decoded uopsinto program ordered sequences or traces in uop queue 234 for execution.When trace cache 230 encounters a complex instruction, microcode ROM 232provides the uops needed to complete the operation.

Some instructions may be converted into a single micro-op, whereasothers need several micro-ops to complete the full operation. In oneembodiment, if more than four micro-ops are needed to complete aninstruction, decoder 228 may access microcode ROM 232 to perform theinstruction. In one embodiment, an instruction may be decoded into asmall number of micro ops for processing at instruction decoder 228. Inanother embodiment, an instruction may be stored within microcode ROM232 should a number of micro-ops be needed to accomplish the operation.Trace cache 230 refers to an entry point programmable logic array (PLA)to determine a correct micro-instruction pointer for reading themicro-code sequences to complete one or more instructions in accordancewith one embodiment from micro-code ROM 232. After microcode ROM 232finishes sequencing micro-ops for an instruction, front end 201 of themachine may resume fetching micro-ops from trace cache 230.

Out-of-order execution engine 203 may prepare instructions forexecution. The out-of-order execution logic has a number of buffers tosmooth out and re-order the flow of instructions to optimize performanceas they go down the pipeline and get scheduled for execution. Theallocator logic in allocator/register renamer 215 allocates the machinebuffers and resources that each uop needs in order to execute. Theregister renaming logic in allocator/register renamer 215 renames logicregisters onto entries in a register file. The allocator 215 alsoallocates an entry for each uop in one of the two uop queues, one formemory operations (memory uop queue 207) and one for non-memoryoperations (integer/floating point uop queue 205), in front of theinstruction schedulers: memory scheduler 209, fast scheduler 202,slow/general floating point scheduler 204, and simple floating pointscheduler 206. Uop schedulers 202, 204, 206, determine when a uop isready to execute based on the readiness of their dependent inputregister operand sources and the availability of the execution resourcesthe uops need to complete their operation. Fast scheduler 202 of oneembodiment may schedule on each half of the main clock cycle while theother schedulers may only schedule once per main processor clock cycle.The schedulers arbitrate for the dispatch ports to schedule uops forexecution.

Register files 208, 210 may be arranged between schedulers 202, 204,206, and execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224 in executionblock 211. Each of register files 208, 210 perform integer and floatingpoint operations, respectively. Each register file 208, 210, may includea bypass network that may bypass or forward just completed results thathave not yet been written into the register file to new dependent uops.Integer register file 208 and floating point register file 210 maycommunicate data with the other. In one embodiment, integer registerfile 208 may be split into two separate register files, one registerfile for low-order thirty-two bits of data and a second register filefor high order thirty-two bits of data. Floating point register file 210may include 128-bit wide entries because floating point instructionstypically have operands from 64 to 128 bits in width.

Execution block 211 may contain execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220,222, 224. Execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224 may executethe instructions. Execution block 211 may include register files 208,210 that store the integer and floating point data operand values thatthe micro-instructions need to execute. In one embodiment, processor 200may comprise a number of execution units: address generation unit (AGU)212, AGU 214, fast ALU 216, fast ALU 218, slow ALU 220, floating pointALU 222, floating point move unit 224. In another embodiment, floatingpoint execution blocks 222, 224, may execute floating point, MMX, SIMD,and SSE, or other operations. In yet another embodiment, floating pointALU 222 may include a 64-bit by 64-bit floating point divider to executedivide, square root, and remainder micro-ops. In various embodiments,instructions involving a floating point value may be handled with thefloating point hardware. In one embodiment, ALU operations may be passedto high-speed ALU execution units 216, 218. High-speed ALUs 216, 218 mayexecute fast operations with an effective latency of half a clock cycle.In one embodiment, most complex integer operations go to slow ALU 220 asslow ALU 220 may include integer execution hardware for long-latencytype of operations, such as a multiplier, shifts, flag logic, and branchprocessing. Memory load/store operations may be executed by AGUs 212,214. In one embodiment, integer ALUs 216, 218, 220 may perform integeroperations on 64-bit data operands. In other embodiments, ALUs 216, 218,220 may be implemented to support a variety of data bit sizes includingsixteen, thirty-two, 128, 256, etc. Similarly, floating point units 222,224 may be implemented to support a range of operands having bits ofvarious widths. In one embodiment, floating point units 222, 224, mayoperate on 128-bit wide packed data operands in conjunction with SIMDand multimedia instructions.

In one embodiment, uops schedulers 202, 204, 206, dispatch dependentoperations before the parent load has finished executing. As uops may bespeculatively scheduled and executed in processor 200, processor 200 mayalso include logic to handle memory misses. If a data load misses in thedata cache, there may be dependent operations in flight in the pipelinethat have left the scheduler with temporarily incorrect data. A replaymechanism tracks and re-executes instructions that use incorrect data.Only the dependent operations might need to be replayed and theindependent ones may be allowed to complete. The schedulers and replaymechanism of one embodiment of a processor may also be designed to catchinstruction sequences for text string comparison operations.

The term “registers” may refer to the on-board processor storagelocations that may be used as part of instructions to identify operands.In other words, registers may be those that may be usable from theoutside of the processor (from a programmer's perspective). However, insome embodiments registers might not be limited to a particular type ofcircuit. Rather, a register may store data, provide data, and performthe functions described herein. The registers described herein may beimplemented by circuitry within a processor using any number ofdifferent techniques, such as dedicated physical registers, dynamicallyallocated physical registers using register renaming, combinations ofdedicated and dynamically allocated physical registers, etc. In oneembodiment, integer registers store 32-bit integer data. A register fileof one embodiment also contains eight multimedia SIMD registers forpacked data. For the discussions below, the registers may be understoodto be data registers designed to hold packed data, such as 64-bit wideMMX™ registers (also referred to as ‘mm’ registers in some instances) inmicroprocessors enabled with MMX technology from Intel Corporation ofSanta Clara, Calif. These MMX registers, available in both integer andfloating point forms, may operate with packed data elements thataccompany SIMD and SSE instructions. Similarly, 128-bit wide XMMregisters relating to SSE2, SSE3, SSE4, or beyond (referred togenerically as “SSEx”) technology may hold such packed data operands. Inone embodiment, in storing packed data and integer data, the registersdo not need to differentiate between the two data types. In oneembodiment, integer and floating point data may be contained in the sameregister file or different register files. Furthermore, in oneembodiment, floating point and integer data may be stored in differentregisters or the same registers.

In the examples of the following figures, a number of data operands maybe described. FIG. 3A illustrates various packed data typerepresentations in multimedia registers, in accordance with embodimentsof the present disclosure. FIG. 3A illustrates data types for a packedbyte 310, a packed word 320, and a packed doubleword (dword) 330 for128-bit wide operands. Packed byte format 310 of this example may be 128bits long and contains sixteen packed byte data elements. A byte may bedefined, for example, as eight bits of data. Information for each bytedata element may be stored in bit 7 through bit 0 for byte 0, bit 15through bit 8 for byte 1, bit 23 through bit 16 for byte 2, and finallybit 120 through bit 127 for byte 15. Thus, all available bits may beused in the register. This storage arrangement increases the storageefficiency of the processor. As well, with sixteen data elementsaccessed, one operation may now be performed on sixteen data elements inparallel.

Generally, a data element may include an individual piece of data thatis stored in a single register or memory location with other dataelements of the same length. In packed data sequences relating to SSExtechnology, the number of data elements stored in a XMM register may be128 bits divided by the length in bits of an individual data element.Similarly, in packed data sequences relating to MMX and SSE technology,the number of data elements stored in an MMX register may be 64 bitsdivided by the length in bits of an individual data element. Althoughthe data types illustrated in FIG. 3A may be 128 bits long, embodimentsof the present disclosure may also operate with 64-bit wide or othersized operands. Packed word format 320 of this example may be 128 bitslong and contains eight packed word data elements. Each packed wordcontains sixteen bits of information. Packed doubleword format 330 ofFIG. 3A may be 128 bits long and contains four packed doubleword dataelements. Each packed doubleword data element contains thirty-two bitsof information. A packed quadword may be 128 bits long and contain twopacked quad-word data elements.

FIG. 3B illustrates possible in-register data storage formats, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Each packed datamay include more than one independent data element. Three packed dataformats are illustrated; packed half 341, packed single 342, and packeddouble 343. One embodiment of packed half 341, packed single 342, andpacked double 343 contain fixed-point data elements. For anotherembodiment one or more of packed half 341, packed single 342, and packeddouble 343 may contain floating-point data elements. One embodiment ofpacked half 341 may be 128 bits long containing eight 16-bit dataelements. One embodiment of packed single 342 may be 128 bits long andcontains four 32-bit data elements. One embodiment of packed double 343may be 128 bits long and contains two 64-bit data elements. It will beappreciated that such packed data formats may be further extended toother register lengths, for example, to 96-bits, 160-bits, 192-bits,224-bits, 256-bits or more.

FIG. 3C illustrates various signed and unsigned packed data typerepresentations in multimedia registers, in accordance with embodimentsof the present disclosure. Unsigned packed byte representation 344illustrates the storage of an unsigned packed byte in a SIMD register.Information for each byte data element may be stored in bit 7 throughbit 0 for byte 0, bit 15 through bit 8 for byte 1, bit 23 through bit 16for byte 2, and finally bit 120 through bit 127 for byte 15. Thus, allavailable bits may be used in the register. This storage arrangement mayincrease the storage efficiency of the processor. As well, with sixteendata elements accessed, one operation may now be performed on sixteendata elements in a parallel fashion. Signed packed byte representation345 illustrates the storage of a signed packed byte. Note that theeighth bit of every byte data element may be the sign indicator.Unsigned packed word representation 346 illustrates how word seventhrough word zero may be stored in a SIMD register. Signed packed wordrepresentation 347 may be similar to the unsigned packed wordin-register representation 346. Note that the sixteenth bit of each worddata element may be the sign indicator. Unsigned packed doublewordrepresentation 348 shows how doubleword data elements are stored. Signedpacked doubleword representation 349 may be similar to unsigned packeddoubleword in-register representation 348. Note that the necessary signbit may be the thirty-second bit of each doubleword data element.

FIG. 3D illustrates an embodiment of an operation encoding (opcode).Furthermore, format 360 may include register/memory operand addressingmodes corresponding with a type of opcode format described in the “IA-32Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual Volume 2: Instruction SetReference,” which is available from Intel Corporation, Santa Clara,Calif. on the world-wide-web (www) at intel.com/design/litcentr. In oneembodiment, an instruction may be encoded by one or more of fields 361and 362. Up to two operand locations per instruction may be identified,including up to two source operand identifiers 364 and 365. In oneembodiment, destination operand identifier 366 may be the same as sourceoperand identifier 364, whereas in other embodiments they may bedifferent. In another embodiment, destination operand identifier 366 maybe the same as source operand identifier 365, whereas in otherembodiments they may be different. In one embodiment, one of the sourceoperands identified by source operand identifiers 364 and 365 may beoverwritten by the results of the text string comparison operations,whereas in other embodiments identifier 364 corresponds to a sourceregister element and identifier 365 corresponds to a destinationregister element. In one embodiment, operand identifiers 364 and 365 mayidentify 32-bit or 64-bit source and destination operands.

FIG. 3E illustrates another possible operation encoding (opcode) format370, having forty or more bits, in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure. Opcode format 370 corresponds with opcode format 360and comprises an optional prefix byte 378. An instruction according toone embodiment may be encoded by one or more of fields 378, 371, and372. Up to two operand locations per instruction may be identified bysource operand identifiers 374 and 375 and by prefix byte 378. In oneembodiment, prefix byte 378 may be used to identify 32-bit or 64-bitsource and destination operands. In one embodiment, destination operandidentifier 376 may be the same as source operand identifier 374, whereasin other embodiments they may be different. For another embodiment,destination operand identifier 376 may be the same as source operandidentifier 375, whereas in other embodiments they may be different. Inone embodiment, an instruction operates on one or more of the operandsidentified by operand identifiers 374 and 375 and one or more operandsidentified by operand identifiers 374 and 375 may be overwritten by theresults of the instruction, whereas in other embodiments, operandsidentified by identifiers 374 and 375 may be written to another dataelement in another register. Opcode formats 360 and 370 allow registerto register, memory to register, register by memory, register byregister, register by immediate, register to memory addressing specifiedin part by MOD fields 363 and 373 and by optional scale-index-base anddisplacement bytes.

FIG. 3F illustrates yet another possible operation encoding (opcode)format, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. 64-bitsingle instruction multiple data (SIMD) arithmetic operations may beperformed through a coprocessor data processing (CDP) instruction.Operation encoding (opcode) format 380 depicts one such CDP instructionhaving CDP opcode fields 382 and 389. The type of CDP instruction, foranother embodiment, operations may be encoded by one or more of fields383, 384, 387, and 388. Up to three operand locations per instructionmay be identified, including up to two source operand identifiers 385and 390 and one destination operand identifier 386. One embodiment ofthe coprocessor may operate on eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and 64-bitvalues. In one embodiment, an instruction may be performed on integerdata elements. In some embodiments, an instruction may be executedconditionally, using condition field 381. For some embodiments, sourcedata sizes may be encoded by field 383. In some embodiments, Zero (Z),negative (N), carry (C), and overflow (V) detection may be done on SIMDfields. For some instructions, the type of saturation may be encoded byfield 384.

FIG. 4A is a block diagram illustrating an in-order pipeline and aregister renaming stage, out-of-order issue/execution pipeline, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. FIG. 4B is ablock diagram illustrating an in-order architecture core and a registerrenaming logic, out-of-order issue/execution logic to be included in aprocessor, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Thesolid lined boxes in FIG. 4A illustrate the in-order pipeline, while thedashed lined boxes illustrates the register renaming, out-of-orderissue/execution pipeline. Similarly, the solid lined boxes in FIG. 4Billustrate the in-order architecture logic, while the dashed lined boxesillustrates the register renaming logic and out-of-order issue/executionlogic.

In FIG. 4A, a processor pipeline 400 may include a fetch stage 402, alength decode stage 404, a decode stage 406, an allocation stage 408, arenaming stage 410, a scheduling (also known as a dispatch or issue)stage 412, a register read/memory read stage 414, an execute stage 416,a write-back/memory-write stage 418, an exception handling stage 422,and a commit stage 424.

In FIG. 4B, arrows denote a coupling between two or more units and thedirection of the arrow indicates a direction of data flow between thoseunits. FIG. 4B shows processor core 490 including a front end unit 430coupled to an execution engine unit 450, and both may be coupled to amemory unit 470.

Core 490 may be a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) core, acomplex instruction set computing (CISC) core, a very long instructionword (VLIW) core, or a hybrid or alternative core type. In oneembodiment, core 490 may be a special-purpose core, such as, forexample, a network or communication core, compression engine, graphicscore, or the like.

Front end unit 430 may include a branch prediction unit 432 coupled toan instruction cache unit 434. Instruction cache unit 434 may be coupledto an instruction translation lookaside buffer (TLB) 436. TLB 436 may becoupled to an instruction fetch unit 438, which is coupled to a decodeunit 440. Decode unit 440 may decode instructions, and generate as anoutput one or more micro-operations, micro-code entry points,microinstructions, other instructions, or other control signals, whichmay be decoded from, or which otherwise reflect, or may be derived from,the original instructions. The decoder may be implemented using variousdifferent mechanisms. Examples of suitable mechanisms include, but arenot limited to, look-up tables, hardware implementations, programmablelogic arrays (PLAs), microcode read-only memories (ROMs), etc. In oneembodiment, instruction cache unit 434 may be further coupled to a level2 (L2) cache unit 476 in memory unit 470. Decode unit 440 may be coupledto a rename/allocator unit 452 in execution engine unit 450.

Execution engine unit 450 may include rename/allocator unit 452 coupledto a retirement unit 454 and a set of one or more scheduler units 456.Scheduler units 456 represent any number of different schedulers,including reservations stations, central instruction window, etc.Scheduler units 456 may be coupled to physical register file units 458.Each of physical register file units 458 represents one or more physicalregister files, different ones of which store one or more different datatypes, such as scalar integer, scalar floating point, packed integer,packed floating point, vector integer, vector floating point, etc.,status (e.g., an instruction pointer that is the address of the nextinstruction to be executed), etc. Physical register file units 458 maybe overlapped by retirement unit 454 to illustrate various ways in whichregister renaming and out-of-order execution may be implemented (e.g.,using one or more reorder buffers and one or more retirement registerfiles, using one or more future files, one or more history buffers, andone or more retirement register files; using register maps and a pool ofregisters; etc.). Generally, the architectural registers may be visiblefrom the outside of the processor or from a programmer's perspective.The registers might not be limited to any known particular type ofcircuit. Various different types of registers may be suitable as long asthey store and provide data as described herein. Examples of suitableregisters include, but might not be limited to, dedicated physicalregisters, dynamically allocated physical registers using registerrenaming, combinations of dedicated and dynamically allocated physicalregisters, etc. Retirement unit 454 and physical register file units 458may be coupled to execution clusters 460. Execution clusters 460 mayinclude a set of one or more execution units 462 and a set of one ormore memory access units 464. Execution units 462 may perform variousoperations (e.g., shifts, addition, subtraction, multiplication) and onvarious types of data (e.g., scalar floating point, packed integer,packed floating point, vector integer, vector floating point). Whilesome embodiments may include a number of execution units dedicated tospecific functions or sets of functions, other embodiments may includeonly one execution unit or multiple execution units that all perform allfunctions. Scheduler units 456, physical register file units 458, andexecution clusters 460 are shown as being possibly plural becausecertain embodiments create separate pipelines for certain types ofdata/operations (e.g., a scalar integer pipeline, a scalar floatingpoint/packed integer/packed floating point/vector integer/vectorfloating point pipeline, and/or a memory access pipeline that each havetheir own scheduler unit, physical register file unit, and/or executioncluster—and in the case of a separate memory access pipeline, certainembodiments may be implemented in which only the execution cluster ofthis pipeline has memory access units 464). It should also be understoodthat where separate pipelines are used, one or more of these pipelinesmay be out-of-order issue/execution and the rest in-order.

The set of memory access units 464 may be coupled to memory unit 470,which may include a data TLB unit 472 coupled to a data cache unit 474coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476. In one exemplary embodiment,memory access units 464 may include a load unit, a store address unit,and a store data unit, each of which may be coupled to data TLB unit 472in memory unit 470. L2 cache unit 476 may be coupled to one or moreother levels of cache and eventually to a main memory. While FIG. 4Billustrates an embodiment in which instruction cache unit 434, datacache unit 474, and level 2 (L2) cache unit 476 reside within core 490,in other embodiments one or more caches or cache units may be internalto a core, external to a core, or apportioned internal to and externalto a core in different combinations.

By way of example, the exemplary register renaming, out-of-orderissue/execution core architecture may implement pipeline 400 asfollows: 1) instruction fetch 438 may perform fetch and length decodingstages 402 and 404; 2) decode unit 440 may perform decode stage 406; 3)rename/allocator unit 452 may perform allocation stage 408 and renamingstage 410; 4) scheduler units 456 may perform schedule stage 412; 5)physical register file units 458 and memory unit 470 may performregister read/memory read stage 414; execution cluster 460 may performexecute stage 416; 6) memory unit 470 and physical register file units458 may perform write-back/memory-write stage 418; 7) various units maybe involved in the performance of exception handling stage 422; and 8)retirement unit 454 and physical register file units 458 may performcommit stage 424.

Core 490 may support one or more instructions sets (e.g., the x86instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newerversions); the MIPS instruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale,Calif.; the ARM instruction set (with optional additional extensionssuch as NEON) of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.).

It should be understood that the core may support multithreading(executing two or more parallel sets of operations or threads) in avariety of manners. Multithreading support may be performed by, forexample, including time sliced multithreading, simultaneousmultithreading (where a single physical core provides a logical core foreach of the threads that physical core is simultaneouslymultithreading), or a combination thereof. Such a combination mayinclude, for example, time sliced fetching and decoding and simultaneousmultithreading thereafter such as in the Intel® Hyperthreadingtechnology.

While register renaming may be described in the context of out-of-orderexecution, it should be understood that register renaming may be used inan in-order architecture. While the illustrated embodiment of theprocessor may also include a separate instruction and data cache units434/474 and a shared L2 cache unit 476, other embodiments may have asingle internal cache for both instructions and data, such as, forexample, a Level 1 (L1) internal cache, or multiple levels of internalcache. In some embodiments, the system may include a combination of aninternal cache and an external cache that may be external to the coreand/or the processor. In other embodiments, all of the caches may beexternal to the core and/or the processor.

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of a processor 500, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure. In one embodiment, processor 500may include a multicore processor. Processor 500 may include a systemagent 510 communicatively coupled to one or more cores 502. Furthermore,cores 502 and system agent 510 may be communicatively coupled to one ormore caches 506. Cores 502, system agent 510, and caches 506 may becommunicatively coupled via one or more memory control units 552.Furthermore, cores 502, system agent 510, and caches 506 may becommunicatively coupled to a graphics module 560 via memory controlunits 552.

Processor 500 may include any suitable mechanism for interconnectingcores 502, system agent 510, and caches 506, and graphics module 560. Inone embodiment, processor 500 may include a ring-based interconnect unit508 to interconnect cores 502, system agent 510, and caches 506, andgraphics module 560. In other embodiments, processor 500 may include anynumber of well-known techniques for interconnecting such units.Ring-based interconnect unit 508 may utilize memory control units 552 tofacilitate interconnections.

Processor 500 may include a memory hierarchy comprising one or morelevels of caches within the cores, one or more shared cache units suchas caches 506, or external memory (not shown) coupled to the set ofintegrated memory controller units 552. Caches 506 may include anysuitable cache. In one embodiment, caches 506 may include one or moremid-level caches, such as level 2 (L2), level 3 (L3), level 4 (L4), orother levels of cache, a last level cache (LLC), and/or combinationsthereof.

In various embodiments, one or more of cores 502 may performmulti-threading. System agent 510 may include components forcoordinating and operating cores 502. System agent unit 510 may includefor example a power control unit (PCU). The PCU may be or include logicand components needed for regulating the power state of cores 502.System agent 510 may include a display engine 512 for driving one ormore externally connected displays or graphics module 560. System agent510 may include an interface 514 for communications busses for graphics.In one embodiment, interface 514 may be implemented by PCI Express(PCIe). In a further embodiment, interface 514 may be implemented by PCIExpress Graphics (PEG). System agent 510 may include a direct mediainterface (DMI) 516. DMI 516 may provide links between different bridgeson a motherboard or other portion of a computer system. System agent 510may include a PCIe bridge 518 for providing PCIe links to other elementsof a computing system. PCIe bridge 518 may be implemented using a memorycontroller 520 and coherence logic 522.

Cores 502 may be implemented in any suitable manner. Cores 502 may behomogenous or heterogeneous in terms of architecture and/or instructionset. In one embodiment, some of cores 502 may be in-order while othersmay be out-of-order. In another embodiment, two or more of cores 502 mayexecute the same instruction set, while others may execute only a subsetof that instruction set or a different instruction set.

Processor 500 may include a general-purpose processor, such as a Core™i3, i5, i7, 2 Duo and Quad, Xeon™, Itanium™, XScale™ or StrongARM™processor, which may be available from Intel Corporation, of SantaClara, Calif. Processor 500 may be provided from another company, suchas ARM Holdings, Ltd, MIPS, etc. Processor 500 may be a special-purposeprocessor, such as, for example, a network or communication processor,compression engine, graphics processor, co-processor, embeddedprocessor, or the like. Processor 500 may be implemented on one or morechips. Processor 500 may be a part of and/or may be implemented on oneor more substrates using any of a number of process technologies, suchas, for example, BiCMOS, CMOS, or NMOS.

In one embodiment, a given one of caches 506 may be shared by multipleones of cores 502. In another embodiment, a given one of caches 506 maybe dedicated to one of cores 502. The assignment of caches 506 to cores502 may be handled by a cache controller or other suitable mechanism. Agiven one of caches 506 may be shared by two or more cores 502 byimplementing time-slices of a given cache 506.

Graphics module 560 may implement an integrated graphics processingsubsystem. In one embodiment, graphics module 560 may include a graphicsprocessor. Furthermore, graphics module 560 may include a media engine565. Media engine 565 may provide media encoding and video decoding.

FIG. 5B is a block diagram of an example implementation of a core 502,in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Core 502 mayinclude a front end 570 communicatively coupled to an out-of-orderengine 580. Core 502 may be communicatively coupled to other portions ofprocessor 500 through cache hierarchy 503.

Front end 570 may be implemented in any suitable manner, such as fullyor in part by front end 201 as described above. In one embodiment, frontend 570 may communicate with other portions of processor 500 throughcache hierarchy 503. In a further embodiment, front end 570 may fetchinstructions from portions of processor 500 and prepare the instructionsto be used later in the processor pipeline as they are passed toout-of-order execution engine 580.

Out-of-order execution engine 580 may be implemented in any suitablemanner, such as fully or in part by out-of-order execution engine 203 asdescribed above. Out-of-order execution engine 580 may prepareinstructions received from front end 570 for execution. Out-of-orderexecution engine 580 may include an allocate module 582. In oneembodiment, allocate module 582 may allocate resources of processor 500or other resources, such as registers or buffers, to execute a giveninstruction. Allocate module 582 may make allocations in schedulers,such as a memory scheduler, fast scheduler, or floating point scheduler.Such schedulers may be represented in FIG. 5B by resource schedulers584. Allocate module 582 may be implemented fully or in part by theallocation logic described in conjunction with FIG. 2. Resourceschedulers 584 may determine when an instruction is ready to executebased on the readiness of a given resource's sources and theavailability of execution resources needed to execute an instruction.Resource schedulers 584 may be implemented by, for example, schedulers202, 204, 206 as discussed above. Resource schedulers 584 may schedulethe execution of instructions upon one or more resources. In oneembodiment, such resources may be internal to core 502, and may beillustrated, for example, as resources 586. In another embodiment, suchresources may be external to core 502 and may be accessible by, forexample, cache hierarchy 503. Resources may include, for example,memory, caches, register files, or registers. Resources internal to core502 may be represented by resources 586 in FIG. 5B. As necessary, valueswritten to or read from resources 586 may be coordinated with otherportions of processor 500 through, for example, cache hierarchy 503. Asinstructions are assigned resources, they may be placed into a reorderbuffer 588. Reorder buffer 588 may track instructions as they areexecuted and may selectively reorder their execution based upon anysuitable criteria of processor 500. In one embodiment, reorder buffer588 may identify instructions or a series of instructions that may beexecuted independently. Such instructions or a series of instructionsmay be executed in parallel from other such instructions. Parallelexecution in core 502 may be performed by any suitable number ofseparate execution blocks or virtual processors. In one embodiment,shared resources—such as memory, registers, and caches—may be accessibleto multiple virtual processors within a given core 502. In otherembodiments, shared resources may be accessible to multiple processingentities within processor 500.

Cache hierarchy 503 may be implemented in any suitable manner. Forexample, cache hierarchy 503 may include one or more lower or mid-levelcaches, such as caches 572, 574. In one embodiment, cache hierarchy 503may include an LLC 595 communicatively coupled to caches 572, 574through logic block 576. In another embodiment, LLC 595 may beimplemented in a module 590 accessible to all processing entities ofprocessor 500. In a further embodiment, module 590 may be implemented inan uncore module of processors from Intel, Inc. Module 590 may includeportions or subsystems of processor 500 necessary for the execution ofcore 502 but might not be implemented within core 502. Besides LLC 595,Module 590 may include, for example, hardware interfaces, memorycoherency coordinators, interprocessor interconnects, instructionpipelines, or memory controllers. Access to RAM 599 available toprocessor 500 may be made through module 590 and, more specifically, LLC595. Furthermore, other instances of core 502 may similarly accessmodule 590. Coordination of the instances of core 502 may be facilitatedin part through module 590.

FIGS. 6-8 may illustrate exemplary systems suitable for includingprocessor 500, while FIG. 9 may illustrate an exemplary system on a chip(SoC) that may include one or more of cores 502. Other system designsand implementations known in the arts for laptops, desktops, handheldPCs, personal digital assistants, engineering workstations, servers,network devices, network hubs, switches, embedded processors, digitalsignal processors (DSPs), graphics devices, video game devices, set-topboxes, micro controllers, cell phones, portable media players, hand helddevices, and various other electronic devices, may also be suitable. Ingeneral, a huge variety of systems or electronic devices thatincorporate a processor and/or other execution logic as disclosed hereinmay be generally suitable.

FIG. 6 illustrates a block diagram of a system 600, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure. System 600 may include one ormore processors 610, 615, which may be coupled to graphics memorycontroller hub (GMCH) 620. The optional nature of additional processors615 is denoted in FIG. 6 with broken lines.

Each processor 610,615 may be some version of processor 500. However, itshould be noted that integrated graphics logic and integrated memorycontrol units might not exist in processors 610,615. FIG. 6 illustratesthat GMCH 620 may be coupled to a memory 640 that may be, for example, adynamic random access memory (DRAM). The DRAM may, for at least oneembodiment, be associated with a non-volatile cache.

GMCH 620 may be a chipset, or a portion of a chipset. GMCH 620 maycommunicate with processors 610, 615 and control interaction betweenprocessors 610, 615 and memory 640. GMCH 620 may also act as anaccelerated bus interface between the processors 610, 615 and otherelements of system 600. In one embodiment, GMCH 620 communicates withprocessors 610, 615 via a multi-drop bus, such as a frontside bus (FSB)695.

Furthermore, GMCH 620 may be coupled to a display 645 (such as a flatpanel display). In one embodiment, GMCH 620 may include an integratedgraphics accelerator. GMCH 620 may be further coupled to an input/output(I/O) controller hub (ICH) 650, which may be used to couple variousperipheral devices to system 600. External graphics device 660 mayinclude a discrete graphics device coupled to ICH 650 along with anotherperipheral device 670.

In other embodiments, additional or different processors may also bepresent in system 600. For example, additional processors 610, 615 mayinclude additional processors that may be the same as processor 610,additional processors that may be heterogeneous or asymmetric toprocessor 610, accelerators (such as, e.g., graphics accelerators ordigital signal processing (DSP) units), field programmable gate arrays,or any other processor. There may be a variety of differences betweenthe physical resources 610, 615 in terms of a spectrum of metrics ofmerit including architectural, micro-architectural, thermal, powerconsumption characteristics, and the like. These differences mayeffectively manifest themselves as asymmetry and heterogeneity amongstprocessors 610, 615. For at least one embodiment, various processors610, 615 may reside in the same die package.

FIG. 7 illustrates a block diagram of a second system 700, in accordancewith embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown in FIG. 7,multiprocessor system 700 may include a point-to-point interconnectsystem, and may include a first processor 770 and a second processor 780coupled via a point-to-point interconnect 750. Each of processors 770and 780 may be some version of processor 500 as one or more ofprocessors 610,615.

While FIG. 7 may illustrate two processors 770, 780, it is to beunderstood that the scope of the present disclosure is not so limited.In other embodiments, one or more additional processors may be presentin a given processor.

Processors 770 and 780 are shown including integrated memory controllerunits 772 and 782, respectively. Processor 770 may also include as partof its bus controller units point-to-point (P-P) interfaces 776 and 778;similarly, second processor 780 may include P-P interfaces 786 and 788.Processors 770, 780 may exchange information via a point-to-point (P-P)interface 750 using P-P interface circuits 778, 788. As shown in FIG. 7,IMCs 772 and 782 may couple the processors to respective memories,namely a memory 732 and a memory 734, which in one embodiment may beportions of main memory locally attached to the respective processors.

Processors 770, 780 may each exchange information with a chipset 790 viaindividual P-P interfaces 752, 754 using point to point interfacecircuits 776, 794, 786, 798. In one embodiment, chipset 790 may alsoexchange information with a high-performance graphics circuit 738 viainterface 792 over a high-performance graphics bus 739.

A shared cache (not shown) may be included in either processor oroutside of both processors, yet connected with the processors via P-Pinterconnect, such that either or both processors' local cacheinformation may be stored in the shared cache if a processor is placedinto a low power mode.

Chipset 790 may be coupled to a first bus 716 via an interface 796. Inone embodiment, first bus 716 may be a Peripheral Component Interconnect(PCI) bus, or a bus such as a PCI Express bus or another thirdgeneration I/O interconnect bus, although the scope of the presentdisclosure is not so limited.

As shown in FIG. 7, various I/O devices 714 may be coupled to first bus716, along with a bus bridge 718 which couples first bus 716 to a secondbus 720. In one embodiment, second bus 720 may be a low pin count (LPC)bus. Various devices may be coupled to second bus 720 including, forexample, a keyboard and/or mouse 722, communication devices 727 and astorage unit 728 such as a disk drive or other mass storage device whichmay include instructions/code and data 730, in one embodiment. Further,an audio I/O 724 may be coupled to second bus 720. Note that otherarchitectures may be possible. For example, instead of thepoint-to-point architecture of FIG. 7, a system may implement amulti-drop bus or other such architecture.

FIG. 8 illustrates a block diagram of a third system 800 in accordancewith embodiments of the present disclosure. Like elements in FIGS. 7 and8 bear like reference numerals, and certain aspects of FIG. 7 have beenomitted from FIG. 8 in order to avoid obscuring other aspects of FIG. 8.

FIG. 8 illustrates that processors 770, 780 may include integratedmemory and I/O control logic (“CL”) 872 and 882, respectively. For atleast one embodiment, CL 872, 882 may include integrated memorycontroller units such as that described above in connection with FIGS. 5and 7. In addition. CL 872, 882 may also include I/O control logic. FIG.8 illustrates that not only memories 732, 734 may be coupled to CL 872,882, but also that I/O devices 814 may also be coupled to control logic872, 882. Legacy I/O devices 815 may be coupled to chipset 790.

FIG. 9 illustrates a block diagram of a SoC 900, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure. Similar elements in FIG. 5 bearlike reference numerals. Also, dashed lined boxes may represent optionalfeatures on more advanced SoCs. An interconnect units 902 may be coupledto: an application processor 910 which may include a set of one or morecores 502A-N, including respective local caches 504A-N, and shared cacheunits 506; a system agent unit 510; a bus controller units 916; anintegrated memory controller units 914; a set of one or more mediaprocessors 920 which may include integrated graphics logic 908, an imageprocessor 924 for providing still and/or video camera functionality, anaudio processor 926 for providing hardware audio acceleration, and avideo processor 928 for providing video encode/decode acceleration; anstatic random access memory (SRAM) unit 930; a direct memory access(DMA) unit 932; and a display unit 940 for coupling to one or moreexternal displays.

FIG. 10 illustrates a processor containing a central processing unit(CPU) and a graphics processing unit (GPU), which may perform at leastone instruction, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure. In one embodiment, an instruction to perform operationsaccording to at least one embodiment could be performed by the CPU. Inanother embodiment, the instruction could be performed by the GPU. Instill another embodiment, the instruction may be performed through acombination of operations performed by the GPU and the CPU. For example,in one embodiment, an instruction in accordance with one embodiment maybe received and decoded for execution on the GPU. However, one or moreoperations within the decoded instruction may be performed by a CPU andthe result returned to the GPU for final retirement of the instruction.Conversely, in some embodiments, the CPU may act as the primaryprocessor and the GPU as the co-processor.

In some embodiments, instructions that benefit from highly parallel,throughput processors may be performed by the GPU, while instructionsthat benefit from the performance of processors that benefit from deeplypipelined architectures may be performed by the CPU. For example,graphics, scientific applications, financial applications and otherparallel workloads may benefit from the performance of the GPU and beexecuted accordingly, whereas more sequential applications, such asoperating system kernel or application code may be better suited for theCPU.

In FIG. 10, processor 1000 includes a CPU 1005, GPU 1010, imageprocessor 1015, video processor 1020, USB controller 1025, UARTcontroller 1030, SPI/SDIO controller 1035, display device 1040, memoryinterface controller 1045, MIPI controller 1050, flash memory controller1055, dual data rate (DDR) controller 1060, security engine 1065, and 1²S/I²C controller 1070. Other logic and circuits may be included in theprocessor of FIG. 10, including more CPUs or GPUs and other peripheralinterface controllers.

One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented byrepresentative data stored on a machine-readable medium which representsvarious logic within the processor, which when read by a machine causesthe machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniques describedherein. Such representations, known as “IP cores” may be stored on atangible, machine-readable medium (“tape”) and supplied to variouscustomers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabricationmachines that actually make the logic or processor. For example, IPcores, such as the Cortex™ family of processors developed by ARMHoldings, Ltd. and Loongson IP cores developed the Institute ofComputing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences may belicensed or sold to various customers or licensees, such as TexasInstruments, Qualcomm, Apple, or Samsung and implemented in processorsproduced by these customers or licensees.

FIG. 11 illustrates a block diagram illustrating the development of IPcores, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Storage1100 may include simulation software 1120 and/or hardware or softwaremodel 1110. In one embodiment, the data representing the IP core designmay be provided to storage 1100 via memory 1140 (e.g., hard disk), wiredconnection (e.g., internet) 1150 or wireless connection 1160. The IPcore information generated by the simulation tool and model may then betransmitted to a fabrication facility 1165 where it may be fabricated bya 3^(rd) party to perform at least one instruction in accordance with atleast one embodiment.

In some embodiments, one or more instructions may correspond to a firsttype or architecture (e.g., x86) and be translated or emulated on aprocessor of a different type or architecture (e.g., ARM). Aninstruction, according to one embodiment, may therefore be performed onany processor or processor type, including ARM, x86, MIPS, a GPU, orother processor type or architecture.

FIG. 12 illustrates how an instruction of a first type may be emulatedby a processor of a different type, in accordance with embodiments ofthe present disclosure. In FIG. 12, program 1205 contains someinstructions that may perform the same or substantially the samefunction as an instruction according to one embodiment. However theinstructions of program 1205 may be of a type and/or format that isdifferent from or incompatible with processor 1215, meaning theinstructions of the type in program 1205 may not be able to executenatively by the processor 1215. However, with the help of emulationlogic, 1210, the instructions of program 1205 may be translated intoinstructions that may be natively be executed by the processor 1215. Inone embodiment, the emulation logic may be embodied in hardware. Inanother embodiment, the emulation logic may be embodied in a tangible,machine-readable medium containing software to translate instructions ofthe type in program 1205 into the type natively executable by processor1215. In other embodiments, emulation logic may be a combination offixed-function or programmable hardware and a program stored on atangible, machine-readable medium. In one embodiment, the processorcontains the emulation logic, whereas in other embodiments, theemulation logic exists outside of the processor and may be provided by athird party. In one embodiment, the processor may load the emulationlogic embodied in a tangible, machine-readable medium containingsoftware by executing microcode or firmware contained in or associatedwith the processor.

FIG. 13 illustrates a block diagram contrasting the use of a softwareinstruction converter to convert binary instructions in a sourceinstruction set to binary instructions in a target instruction set, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. In theillustrated embodiment, the instruction converter may be a softwareinstruction converter, although the instruction converter may beimplemented in software, firmware, hardware, or various combinationsthereof. FIG. 13 shows a program in a high level language 1302 may becompiled using an x86 compiler 1304 to generate x86 binary code 1306that may be natively executed by a processor with at least one x86instruction set core 1316. The processor with at least one x86instruction set core 1316 represents any processor that may performsubstantially the same functions as an Intel processor with at least onex86 instruction set core by compatibly executing or otherwise processing(1) a substantial portion of the instruction set of the Intel x86instruction set core or (2) object code versions of applications orother software targeted to run on an Intel processor with at least onex86 instruction set core, in order to achieve substantially the sameresult as an Intel processor with at least one x86 instruction set core.x86 compiler 1304 represents a compiler that may be operable to generatex86 binary code 1306 (e.g., object code) that may, with or withoutadditional linkage processing, be executed on the processor with atleast one x86 instruction set core 1316. Similarly, FIG. 13 shows theprogram in high level language 1302 may be compiled using an alternativeinstruction set compiler 1308 to generate alternative instruction setbinary code 1310 that may be natively executed by a processor without atleast one x86 instruction set core 1314 (e.g., a processor with coresthat execute the MIPS instruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale,Calif. and/or that execute the ARM instruction set of ARM Holdings ofSunnyvale, Calif.). Instruction converter 1312 may be used to convertx86 binary code 1306 into code that may be natively executed by theprocessor without an x86 instruction set core 1314. This converted codemight not be the same as alternative instruction set binary code 1310;however, the converted code will accomplish the general operation and bemade up of instructions from the alternative instruction set. Thus,instruction converter 1312 represents software, firmware, hardware, or acombination thereof that, through emulation, simulation or any otherprocess, allows a processor or other electronic device that does nothave an x86 instruction set processor or core to execute x86 binary code1306.

FIG. 14 is a block diagram of an instruction set architecture 1400 of aprocessor, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure.Instruction set architecture 1400 may include any suitable number orkind of components.

For example, instruction set architecture 1400 may include processingentities such as one or more cores 1406, 1407 within a processorsubsystem 1405, and a graphics processing unit 1415. Cores 1406, 1407may be communicatively coupled to the rest of instruction setarchitecture 1400 through any suitable mechanism, such as through a busor cache. In one embodiment, cores 1406, 1407 may be communicativelycoupled through an L2 cache control 1408, which may include a businterface unit 1409 and an L2 cache 1411. Cores 1406, 1407 and graphicsprocessing unit 1415 may be communicatively coupled to each other and tothe remainder of instruction set architecture 1400 through interconnect1410. In one embodiment, graphics processing unit 1415 may use a videocodec 1420 defining the manner in which particular video signals will beencoded and decoded for output.

Instruction set architecture 1400 may also include any number or kind ofinterfaces, controllers, or other mechanisms for interfacing orcommunicating with other portions of an electronic device or system.Such mechanisms may facilitate interaction with, for example,peripherals, communications devices, other processors, or memory. In theexample of FIG. 14, instruction set architecture 1400 may include aliquid crystal display (LCD) video interface 1425, a subscriberinterface module (SIM) interface 1430, a boot ROM interface 1435, asynchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) controller 1440, aflash controller 1445, and a serial peripheral interface (SPI) masterunit 1450. LCD video interface 1425 may provide output of video signalsfrom, for example, GPU 1415 and through, for example, a mobile industryprocessor interface (MIPI) 1490 or a high-definition multimediainterface (HDMI) 1495 to a display. Such a display may include, forexample, an LCD. SIM interface 1430 may provide access to or from a SIMcard or device. SDRAM controller 1440 may provide access to or frommemory such as an SDRAM chip or module 1460. Flash controller 1445 mayprovide access to or from memory such as flash memory 1465 or otherinstances of RAM. SPI master unit 1450 may provide access to or fromcommunications modules, such as a Bluetooth module 1470, high-speed 3Gmodem 1475, global positioning system module 1480, or wireless module1485 implementing a communications standard such as 802.11. Instructionset architecture 1400 may also include a power control unit 1455.

FIG. 15 is a more detailed block diagram of an instruction setarchitecture 1500 of a processor, in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure. Instruction architecture 1500 may implement one ormore aspects of instruction set architecture 1400. Furthermore,instruction set architecture 1500 may illustrate modules and mechanismsfor the execution of instructions within a processor.

Instruction architecture 1500 may include a memory system 1540communicatively coupled to one or more execution entities 1565.Furthermore, instruction architecture 1500 may include a caching and businterface unit such as unit 1510 communicatively coupled to executionentities 1565 and memory system 1540. In one embodiment, loading ofinstructions into execution entities 1565 may be performed by one ormore stages of execution. Such stages may include, for example,instruction prefetch stage 1530, dual instruction decode stage 1550,register rename stage 1555, issue stage 1560, and writeback stage 1570.

In one embodiment, memory system 1540 may include an executedinstruction pointer 1580. Executed instruction pointer 1580 may store avalue identifying the oldest, undispatched instruction within a batch ofinstructions. The oldest instruction may correspond to the lowestProgram Order (PO) value. A PO may include a unique number of aninstruction. Such an instruction may be a single instruction within athread represented by multiple strands. A PO may be used in orderinginstructions to ensure correct execution semantics of code. A PO may bereconstructed by mechanisms such as evaluating increments to PO encodedin the instruction rather than an absolute value. Such a reconstructedPO may be known as an “RPO.” Although a PO may be referenced herein,such a PO may be used interchangeably with an RPO. A strand may includea sequence of instructions that are data dependent upon each other. Thestrand may be arranged by a binary translator at compilation time.Hardware executing a strand may execute the instructions of a givenstrand in order according to the PO of the various instructions. Athread may include multiple strands such that instructions of differentstrands may depend upon each other. A PO of a given strand may be the POof the oldest instruction in the strand which has not yet beendispatched to execution from an issue stage. Accordingly, given a threadof multiple strands, each strand including instructions ordered by PO,executed instruction pointer 1580 may store the oldest—illustrated bythe lowest number—PO in the thread.

In another embodiment, memory system 1540 may include a retirementpointer 1582. Retirement pointer 1582 may store a value identifying thePO of the last retired instruction. Retirement pointer 1582 may be setby, for example, retirement unit 454. If no instructions have yet beenretired, retirement pointer 1582 may include a null value.

Execution entities 1565 may include any suitable number and kind ofmechanisms by which a processor may execute instructions. In the exampleof FIG. 15, execution entities 1565 may include ALU/multiplication units(MUL) 1566, ALUs 1567, and floating point units (FPU) 1568. In oneembodiment, such entities may make use of information contained within agiven address 1569. Execution entities 1565 in combination with stages1530, 1550, 1555, 1560, 1570 may collectively form an execution unit.

Unit 1510 may be implemented in any suitable manner. In one embodiment,unit 1510 may perform cache control. In such an embodiment, unit 1510may thus include a cache 1525. Cache 1525 may be implemented, in afurther embodiment, as an L2 unified cache with any suitable size, suchas zero, 128 k, 256 k, 512 k, 1M, or 2M bytes of memory. In another,further embodiment, cache 1525 may be implemented in error-correctingcode memory. In another embodiment, unit 1510 may perform businterfacing to other portions of a processor or electronic device. Insuch an embodiment, unit 1510 may thus include a bus interface unit 1520for communicating over an interconnect, intraprocessor bus,interprocessor bus, or other communication bus, port, or line. Businterface unit 1520 may provide interfacing in order to perform, forexample, generation of the memory and input/output addresses for thetransfer of data between execution entities 1565 and the portions of asystem external to instruction architecture 1500.

To further facilitate its functions, bus interface unit 1510 may includean interrupt control and distribution unit 1511 for generatinginterrupts and other communications to other portions of a processor orelectronic device. In one embodiment, bus interface unit 1510 mayinclude a snoop control unit 1512 that handles cache access andcoherency for multiple processing cores. In a further embodiment, toprovide such functionality, snoop control unit 1512 may include acache-to-cache transfer unit 1513 that handles information exchangesbetween different caches. In another, further embodiment, snoop controlunit 1512 may include one or more snoop filters 1514 that monitors thecoherency of other caches (not shown) so that a cache controller, suchas unit 1510, does not have to perform such monitoring directly. Unit1510 may include any suitable number of timers 1515 for synchronizingthe actions of instruction architecture 1500. Also, unit 1510 mayinclude an AC port 1516.

Memory system 1540 may include any suitable number and kind ofmechanisms for storing information for the processing needs ofinstruction architecture 1500. In one embodiment, memory system 1540 mayinclude a load store unit 1546 for storing information such as bufferswritten to or read back from memory or registers and a data cache 1542.In another embodiment, memory system 1540 may include a translationlookaside buffer (TLB) 1545 that provides look-up of address valuesbetween physical and virtual addresses. In yet another embodiment,memory system 1540 may include a memory management unit (MMU) 1544 forfacilitating access to virtual memory. In still yet another embodiment,memory system 1540 may include a prefetcher 1543 for requestinginstructions from memory before such instructions are actually needed tobe executed, in order to reduce latency.

The operation of instruction architecture 1500 to execute an instructionmay be performed through different stages. For example, using unit 1510instruction prefetch stage 1530 may access an instruction throughprefetcher 1543. Instructions retrieved may be stored in instructioncache 1532. Prefetch stage 1530 may enable an option 1531 for fast-loopmode, wherein a series of instructions forming a loop that is smallenough to fit within a given cache are executed. In one embodiment, suchan execution may be performed without needing to access additionalinstructions from, for example, instruction cache 1532. Determination ofwhat instructions to prefetch may be made by, for example, branchprediction unit 1535, which may access indications of execution inglobal history 1536, indications of target addresses 1537, or contentsof a return stack 1538 to determine which of branches 1557 of code willbe executed next. Such branches may be possibly prefetched as a result.Branches 1557 may be produced through other stages of operation asdescribed below. Instruction prefetch stage 1530 may provideinstructions as well as any predictions about future instructions todual instruction decode stage 1550.

Dual instruction decode stage 1550 may translate a received instructioninto microcode-based instructions that may be executed. Dual instructiondecode stage 1550 may simultaneously decode two instructions per clockcycle. Furthermore, dual instruction decode stage 1550 may pass itsresults to register rename stage 1555. In addition, dual instructiondecode stage 1550 may determine any resulting branches from its decodingand eventual execution of the microcode. Such results may be input intobranches 1557.

Register rename stage 1555 may translate references to virtual registersor other resources into references to physical registers or resources.Register rename stage 1555 may include indications of such mapping in aregister pool 1556. Register rename stage 1555 may alter theinstructions as received and send the result to issue stage 1560.

Issue stage 1560 may issue or dispatch commands to execution entities1565. Such issuance may be performed in an out-of-order fashion. In oneembodiment, multiple instructions may be held at issue stage 1560 beforebeing executed. Issue stage 1560 may include an instruction queue 1561for holding such multiple commands. Instructions may be issued by issuestage 1560 to a particular processing entity 1565 based upon anyacceptable criteria, such as availability or suitability of resourcesfor execution of a given instruction. In one embodiment, issue stage1560 may reorder the instructions within instruction queue 1561 suchthat the first instructions received might not be the first instructionsexecuted. Based upon the ordering of instruction queue 1561, additionalbranching information may be provided to branches 1557. Issue stage 1560may pass instructions to executing entities 1565 for execution.

Upon execution, writeback stage 1570 may write data into registers,queues, or other structures of instruction set architecture 1500 tocommunicate the completion of a given command. Depending upon the orderof instructions arranged in issue stage 1560, the operation of writebackstage 1570 may enable additional instructions to be executed.Performance of instruction set architecture 1500 may be monitored ordebugged by trace unit 1575.

FIG. 16 is a block diagram of an execution pipeline 1600 for aninstruction set architecture of a processor, in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure. Execution pipeline 1600 mayillustrate operation of, for example, instruction architecture 1500 ofFIG. 15.

Execution pipeline 1600 may include any suitable combination ofoperations. In 1605, predictions of the branch that is to be executednext may be made. In one embodiment, such predictions may be based uponprevious executions of instructions and the results thereof. In 1610,instructions corresponding to the predicted branch of execution may beloaded into an instruction cache. In 1615, one or more such instructionsin the instruction cache may be fetched for execution. In 1620, theinstructions that have been fetched may be decoded into microcode ormore specific machine language. In one embodiment, multiple instructionsmay be simultaneously decoded. In 1625, references to registers or otherresources within the decoded instructions may be reassigned. Forexample, references to virtual registers may be replaced with referencesto corresponding physical registers. In 1630, the instructions may bedispatched to queues for execution. In 1640, the instructions may beexecuted. Such execution may be performed in any suitable manner. In1650, the instructions may be issued to a suitable execution entity. Themanner in which the instruction is executed may depend upon the specificentity executing the instruction. For example, at 1655, an ALU mayperform arithmetic functions. The ALU may utilize a single clock cyclefor its operation, as well as two shifters. In one embodiment, two ALUsmay be employed, and thus two instructions may be executed at 1655. At1660, a determination of a resulting branch may be made. A programcounter may be used to designate the destination to which the branchwill be made. 1660 may be executed within a single clock cycle. At 1665,floating point arithmetic may be performed by one or more FPUs. Thefloating point operation may require multiple clock cycles to execute,such as two to ten cycles. At 1670, multiplication and divisionoperations may be performed. Such operations may be performed in fourclock cycles. At 1675, loading and storing operations to registers orother portions of pipeline 1600 may be performed. The operations mayinclude loading and storing addresses. Such operations may be performedin four clock cycles. At 1680, write-back operations may be performed asrequired by the resulting operations of 1655-1675.

FIG. 17 is a block diagram of an electronic device 1700 for utilizing aprocessor 1710, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure. Electronic device 1700 may include, for example, a notebook,an ultrabook, a computer, a tower server, a rack server, a blade server,a laptop, a desktop, a tablet, a mobile device, a phone, an embeddedcomputer, or any other suitable electronic device.

Electronic device 1700 may include processor 1710 communicativelycoupled to any suitable number or kind of components, peripherals,modules, or devices. Such coupling may be accomplished by any suitablekind of bus or interface, such as I²C bus, system management bus(SMBus), low pin count (LPC) bus, SPI, high definition audio (HDA) bus,Serial Advance Technology Attachment (SATA) bus, USB bus (versions 1, 2,3), or Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) bus.

Such components may include, for example, a display 1724, a touch screen1725, a touch pad 1730, a near field communications (NFC) unit 1745, asensor hub 1740, a thermal sensor 1746, an express chipset (EC) 1735, atrusted platform module (TPM) 1738, BIOS/firmware/flash memory 1722, adigital signal processor 1760, a drive 1720 such as a solid state disk(SSD) or a hard disk drive (HDD), a wireless local area network (WLAN)unit 1750, a Bluetooth unit 1752, a wireless wide area network (WWAN)unit 1756, a global positioning system (GPS) 1755, a camera 1754 such asa USB 3.0 camera, or a low power double data rate (LPDDR) memory unit1715 implemented in, for example, the LPDDR3 standard. These componentsmay each be implemented in any suitable manner.

Furthermore, in various embodiments other components may becommunicatively coupled to processor 1710 through the componentsdiscussed above. For example, an accelerometer 1741, ambient lightsensor (ALS) 1742, compass 1743, and gyroscope 1744 may becommunicatively coupled to sensor hub 1740. A thermal sensor 1739, fan1737, keyboard 1736, and touch pad 1730 may be communicatively coupledto EC 1735. Speakers 1763, headphones 1764, and a microphone 1765 may becommunicatively coupled to an audio unit 1762, which may in turn becommunicatively coupled to DSP 1760. Audio unit 1762 may include, forexample, an audio codec and a class D amplifier. A SIM card 1757 may becommunicatively coupled to WWAN unit 1756. Components such as WLAN unit1750 and Bluetooth unit 1752, as well as WWAN unit 1756 may beimplemented in a next generation form factor (NGFF).

Embodiments of the present disclosure involve communication using aregister management array circuit. A register management array circuitin accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure may be used tofacilitate rapid and non-disruptive communication between circuitrywithin a core of a processor and circuitry external to a core of aprocessor, such as a power management unit. FIG. 18 is a block diagramof a processor 1802 including a register management array circuit 1810,according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

Typically, a processor includes one or more cores, and one or moreremote circuits. In some embodiments, a remote circuit may operate tocontrol or set a power state of a core in a processor. For example, aremote circuit may include a power management unit operable to change apower state of a processor. A power state of a processor may include aset of operating parameters that impact power consumption or performanceof a processor. For example, a power state may include a set offrequency or voltage supply settings. Lowering a supply voltage of aprocessor may reduce power consumption, but may limit a maximumoperating frequency of the processor. A power state transition may occurfor a variety of reasons. For example, circuitry or logic in a processormay detect a period of low resource utilization, and temporarily drop avoltage or frequency of a component of the processor to conserve power.Additionally, circuitry or logic external to a processor may request orforce a change in a power state. For example, a system including aprocessor may detect a condition external to the processor (such as alow battery, or a temporary reduction in available power for a system)and attempt to change power states to conserve power. Furthermore,software, such as an operating system, may cause a processor to changepower states for any suitable reason.

To transition between power states, a core may communicate with a powermanagement unit by reading from or writing to one or more remoteregisters. For example, cores may provide information to or receiveinformation from a remote register in a power management unit to assistin determining whether a power state transition would be beneficial tosystem operations. However, in some architectures, communication betweena core and a remote register may be inefficient and disruptive. In someprocessors, data is transmitted from a core to a remote register bystopping all core activities, reading a physical address of a registerin the power management unit, then generating and sending a packetincluding the data over a sideband interface. Because the frequency ofthe power management unit may be lower than the frequency of aprocessing core, this process may halt core operations for thousands ofprocessing cycles (or more). Accordingly, transmitting a bit from a coreto a remote register in a power management unit or receiving a bit froma remote register in a power management unit make take a large number ofcore clock cycles, during which core operations are halted. A powermanagement unit is just one example of a circuit in a processor that mayinclude a remote register. Cores may also write data to or read datafrom many other remote registers in other circuits of a processor.Remote circuits including remote registers may be located in an SoCregion of processor.

Because of the performance impact of communicating information between acore and a remote register, systems may be designed to minimize theamount or frequency of communication between a core and a remotecircuit. Accordingly, an efficient mechanism for communicating between acore and a remote circuit is disclosed herein. Utilizing this efficientmechanism for communicating between a core and a remote circuit mayallow more communication and information to be shared between a core anda remote circuit, without incurring a performance penalty due to aninefficient communication protocol, thereby increasing systemefficiency.

In the example embodiment illustrated in FIG. 18, processor 1802 may beimplemented as a SoC. An SoC may include various regions, such as SoCcontrol circuitry region 1818, core region 1816, and processor 1802. SoCcontrol circuitry region 1818 may include circuitry or logic to controlthe operation of components of processor 1802. For example, SoC controlcircuitry region 1818 may include remote circuit 1808. In someembodiments, remote circuit 1808 may be a power management unit operableto cause different portions of processor 1802 to operate at differentvoltages or frequencies. For example, remote circuit 1808 may causedifferent processing cores in processor 1808 to operate at differentvoltages or frequencies. In the example embodiment illustrated in FIG.18, processor 1802 includes two processing cores: processing core 1804and processing core 1806, however processor 1802 may include anysuitable number of processing cores. Processing cores 1804 and 1806 mayinclude features of any cores or processing cores described above withreferences to FIGS. 1-17. Remote circuit 1808 may include circuitry orlogic to control an operating parameter of either processing core 1804or processing core 1806. For example, in some embodiments, remotecircuit 1808 may be a power management unit including circuitry or logicto control an operating frequency or an operating voltage of eitherprocessing core 1804 or processing core 1806.

In some embodiments, remote circuit 1808 may cause a portion ofprocessor 1802 to operate at a particular operational set point. Forexample, in embodiments where remote circuit 1808 is a power managementunit, remote circuit 1808 may cause a portion of processor 1802 tooperate at a particular frequency or voltage in response to informationstored in one or more registers associated with remote circuit 1808. Forexample, remote circuit 1808 may include remote register 1820 a andremote register 1820 b (collectively “remote registers 1820”). Remoteregisters 1820 may include circuitry or logic to store informationreceived from or to be transmitted to processing core 1804 or processingcore 1806. For example, remote registers 1820 may include circuitry orlogic to store binary bits corresponding to an operational parameter ofa processing core, such as a voltage or frequency setting, or any othersuitable information. In some embodiments, remote registers 1820 may be32 bits wide, 64 bits wide, 128 bits wide, or any other suitable width.

Processor 1802 may also include core region 1816. Core region 1816 mayinclude processing cores 1804 and 1806. Processing cores 1804 and 1806may include local core registers 1812 and 1814, respectively. Local coreregisters 1812 and 1814 may include circuitry or logic to storeinformation to be transmitted to or received from remote circuit 1808.In some embodiments, local core registers 1812 and 1814 may includecircuitry or logic to store binary bits corresponding to informationusable to determine or set an operational parameter of a processor. Forexample, in some embodiments, local core registers 1812 and 1814 mayinclude circuitry or logic to store binary bits corresponding toinformation usable to determine whether a power state change wouldconserve power, or would be otherwise beneficial. In furtherembodiments, local core registers 1812 and 1814 may include circuitry orlogic to store binary bits corresponding to a voltage or frequencysetting, or any other suitable information. In some embodiments, localcore registers 1812 and 1814 may be 32 bits wide, 64 bits wide, 128 bitswide, or any other suitable width.

Core region 1816 may further include register management array circuit1810. As illustrated in the example embodiment depicted in FIG. 18,register management array circuit 1810 may be located within core region1816 and may be located externally to processing cores 1804 and 1806. Aportion of core region 1816 external to processing cores 1804 and 1806may be referred to as a “core periphery.” Therefore, register managementarray circuit 1810 may be located in a core periphery of processor 1802.However, in further embodiments, register management array circuit 1810may be located in any suitable location within processor 1802.

The operation of register management array circuit 1810 is described infurther detail below with reference to FIG. 19. In general, rather thantransmitting information directly to remote circuit 1808, processingcores 1804 and 1806 may cause information to be transmitted to remotecircuit 1808 via register management array circuit 1810 by writing datato local core local core registers 1812 and 1814. Likewise, rather thantransmitting information directly to processing cores 1804 and 1806,remote circuit 1808 may cause information to be transmitted toprocessing cores 1804 and 1806 via register management array circuit1810 by writing data to remote registers 1820.

Processing cores 1804 and 1806 may communicate with register managementarray circuit 1810 via parallel event bus 1822. Parallel event bus 1822may be any suitable interconnect fabric. Register management arraycircuit 1810 may communicate with remote circuit 1808 via generalpurpose sideband (“GPSB”) 1824. GPSB 1824 may be any suitableinterconnect fabric.

FIG. 19 is a block diagram of a register management array circuit,according to embodiments of the present disclosure. Register managementarray circuit 1910 may have similar features to register managementarray circuit 1810, described above with reference to FIG. 18. Registermanagement array circuit 1910 may include register management arraycontrol unit 1902. Register management array control unit 1902 mayinclude circuitry or logic to facilitate communication between a localcore register and a remote register in a remote circuit, such as a powermanagement unit. For example, register management array control unit1902 may be configured to receive data from a processing core includinginformation to be written from a local register in the processing coreto a remote register in a remote circuit, such as a power managementunit. Similarly, register management array control unit 1902 may beconfigured to receive a data from a register management unit includinginformation to be written from a remote register in the remote circuitto a local register in a processing core.

Register management array control unit 1902 may be configured to receivea write request from a processing core via parallel event bus 1922. Insome embodiments, register management array control unit 1902 may waitin an idle state until such a request is received. Upon receiving awrite request, register management array control unit 1902 may allocateresources to a prospective write transaction over parallel event bus1922. After such resources are allocated, a processing core may transmita write request in one or more packets over parallel event bus 1922.Register management array control unit 1902 may receive, store, andprocess a write request. A received write request may include a sequenceof binary bits which may include several pieces of information. Forexample, a write request may include one or more bits specifying a widthof register data to be written. In some embodiments, data to be writtenmay be 32 bits wide, 64 bits wide, 128 bits wide, or any other suitablewidth. Depending on how many different widths of registers are allowedin a particular system, a “width” field of a write request may includeone or more bits to specify the width. In some embodiments, parallelevent bus 1922 may transmit fewer bits than the maximum allowed registerwidth. In such embodiments, a processing core may transmit data toregister management array control unit 1902 in multiple transactionsover parallel event bus 1922. In some embodiments, a write request mayinclude one or more reserved bits.

Additionally, a write request may include a logical address of a remoteregister. A remote register in a remote circuit may have a fixedphysical register address. Accordingly, register management arraycircuit 1910 may include register management array 1904. Registermanagement array 1904 may include a table useable to correlate an arrayindex to a physical address of a remote register. Register managementarray 1904 may include any suitable number of addresses of remoteregisters and corresponding indexes. Information in register managementarray 1904 may be read into register management array 1904 at systeminitialization, may be hard-coded into a processor, or may be populatedusing any other suitable mechanism. For example, information in registermanagement array 1904 may be read in from fuses in a processor (such asprocessors 1802 and 1804, described above with reference to FIG. 18)storing information associating a physical address of a remote registerwith a logical address of a remote register. A write request may includean index value to identify the physical address of a remote register.Based on the index value (i.e., logical address of a remote register),register management array control unit 1902 may determine a physicaladdress of a remote register by reading a physical address value 1914corresponding to an index value 1912 in register management array 1904.

Based on received data to be written to a remote register, informationidentifying a width of the data to be written to a remote register, anda physical address of a remote register identified based on a receivedlogical address of a remote register, register management array controlunit 1902 may write information to a remote register in a remotecircuit. For example, register management array control unit 1902 mayassemble this information into one or more packets of binary data.Register management array control unit 1902 may transmit thisinformation to a remote circuit through any suitable means. For example,register management array control unit 1902 may communicate with aregister management unit through GPSB 1924. In such embodiments, a GPSBpacket may include one or more width bits, the data to be transmitted, aphysical address of a remote register, and one more bits designating theremote circuit as the destination of the GPSB packet. After transmittinga packet to a remote circuit, register management array control unit1902 may wait to receive a GPSB acknowledgment of a successfultransmission. Upon receiving such an acknowledgment, register managementarray control unit 1902 may return to an idle state. If noacknowledgment is received, or if register management array control unit1902 receives an indication that transmission was unsuccessful, registermanagement array control unit 1902 may resend the packet.

Register management array circuit 1910 may further include dirty bitregister 1906. Dirty bit register 1906 may store information indicatingwhether a read or write request between a local core register and aremote register is pending, or whether a request is not pending.Register management array control unit 1902 may be configured to updateor read values stored in dirty bit register 1906. For example, uponreceiving a write request to a particular remote register, registermanagement array control unit 1902 may update a value stored in dirtybit register 1906 to indicate that a write to that remote register ispending. Upon receiving an acknowledgement that a write has beencompleted, register management array control unit 1902 may update thevalue stored in dirty bit register 1906 to indicate that no write tothat remote register is pending.

Register management array control unit 1902 may be configured to receivea read request from a processing core via parallel event bus 1922. Areceived read request may include a sequence of binary bits which mayinclude several pieces of information. For example, a read request mayinclude one or more bits specifying a width of register data to be read.In some embodiments, data to be written may be 32 bits wide, 64 bitswide, 128 bits wide, or any other suitable width. Depending on how manydifferent widths of registers are allowed in a particular system, a“width” field of a read request may include one or more bits to specifythe width. In some embodiments, a read request may include one or morereserved bits.

Additionally, a read request may include a logical address of a remoteregister. For example, a read request may include a logical address of aremote register that can be used as an index value to identify aphysical address of a remote register. Based on an index value, registermanagement array control unit 1902 may determine a physical address of aremote register by reading a physical address value 1914 correspondingto an index value 1912 in register management array 1904.

Based on information identifying the width of the data to be read from aremote register, and a physical address of a remote register identifiedbased on a logical address of a remote register, register managementarray control unit 1902 may read information from a remote register in aremote circuit. For example, register management array control unit 1902may assemble this information into one or more packets of binary data.Register management array control unit 1902 may transmit this readrequest to a remote circuit through any suitable means. For example,register management array control unit 1902 may communicate with aremote circuit through GPSB 1924. In response, the remote circuit maytransmit the requested data to register management array control unit1902 via GPSB 1924. After receiving the requested data, registermanagement array control unit 1902 may transmit the requested data to alocal core register via parallel event bus 1922. While a read operationis pending, register management array control unit 1902 may update avalue stored in dirty bit register 1906 to indicate that a read from aparticular remote register is pending. Upon receiving an acknowledgementthat a read operation has been completed, register management arraycontrol unit 1902 may update a value stored in dirty bit register 1906to indicate that no read from that remote register is pending.

FIG. 20 illustrates an example method 2000 for writing information froma local core register to a remote register, according to embodiments ofthe present disclosure. Method 2000 may be implemented by any of theelements shown in FIGS. 1-19. Method 2000 may be initiated by anysuitable criteria and may initiate operation at any suitable point. Inone embodiment, method 2000 may initiate operation at 2005. Method 2000may include greater or fewer operations than those illustrated.Moreover, method 2000 may execute its operations in an order differentthan those illustrated below. Method 2000 may terminate at any suitableoperation. Moreover, method 2000 may repeat operation at any suitableoperation. Method 2000 may perform any of its operations in parallelwith other operations of method 2000, or in parallel with operations ofother methods.

At 2005, a processing core may write information that is to be writtento a remote register to a local core register. For example, in someembodiments, a processing core may write information to a local coreregister based upon collection of information relating to processorutilization, system conditions, or in response to a firmware command orany other suitable condition.

At 2010, a processing core may transmit a write request to a registermanagement array circuit. For example, in response to writinginformation to a local core register, a processing core may transmit awrite request to a register management array circuit. A received writerequest may include a sequence of binary bits which may include severalpieces of information. For example, a write request may include one ormore bits specifying a width of register data to be written. In someembodiments, data to be written may be 32 bits wide, 64 bits wide, 128bits wide, or any other suitable width. Depending on how many differentwidths of registers are allowed in a particular system, a “width” fieldof a write request may include one or more bits to specify the width. Insome embodiments, a write request may include one or more reserved bits.Additionally, a write request may include a logical address of a remoteregister.

At 2015, a register management array circuit may set a dirty bitcorresponding to a received logical address of a remote register. Adirty bit may be stored in a dirty bit array in a register managementarray circuit. A dirty bit, if set, may indicate that a write operationis in progress to a remote register.

At 2020, a register management array circuit may identify a physicaladdress of a remote register. In some embodiments, based on a receivedlogical address of a remote register, a register management arraycontrol circuit may read or identify, from a register management array,a physical address corresponding to a logical address of the remoteregister. For example, a logical address of a remote register may beused as an index value to read a physical remote register address from aregister management array.

At 2025, a register management array circuit may write a data segment toa remote register. A total length of a write request may be longer thanthe number of bits to be written in a segment of bits sent to a remoteregister. Accordingly, a register management array circuit may write asegment of data including fewer bits than are included in the datareceived from a processing core. A register management array circuit maycommunicate with a remote circuit via a GPSB.

At 2030, a register management array circuit may determine whether alldata segments have been written to the remote register. A write requestmay include one or more bits indicating a length of the data to bewritten to a remote register. Based on such a length value, a registermanagement array circuit may determine whether all bits of a datarequest have been written to a remote register. If fewer than all bitshave been written, method 2000 may return to operation 2025. If all bitshave been written, method 2000 may proceed to operation 2035.

At 2035, a register management array circuit may unset a dirty bitcorresponding to a received logical address of a remote register. Adirty bit may be stored in a dirty bit array. Unsetting a dirty bit mayindicate that a write operation to a remote register has been completed.

FIG. 21 illustrates an example method 2100 for reading information froma remote register to a local core register, according to embodiments ofthe present disclosure. Method 2100 may be implemented by any of theelements shown in FIGS. 1-20. Method 2100 may be initiated by anysuitable criteria and may initiate operation at any suitable point. Inone embodiment, method 2100 may initiate operation at 2105. Method 2100may include greater or fewer operations than those illustrated.Moreover, method 2100 may execute its operations in an order differentthan those illustrated below. Method 2100 may terminate at any suitableoperation. Moreover, method 2100 may repeat operation at any suitableoperation. Method 2100 may perform any of its operations in parallelwith other operations of method 2100, or in parallel with operations ofother methods.

At 2105, a processing core may transmit a read request to a registermanagement array unit. A received read request may include a sequence ofbinary bits which may include several pieces of information. Forexample, a read request may include a bits specifying a width ofregister data to be read. In some embodiments, data to be read may be 32bits wide, 64 bits wide, 128 bits wide, or any other suitable width.Depending on how many different widths of registers are allowed in aparticular system, a “width” field of a write request may include one ormore bits to specify the width. In some embodiments, a read request mayinclude one or more reserved bits. Additionally, a read request mayinclude a logical address of a remote register.

At 2110, a register management array circuit may set a dirty bitcorresponding to a received logical address of a remote register. Adirty bit may be stored in a dirty bit array. A dirty bit, if set, mayindicate that a read operation is in progress to a remote register.

At 2115, a register management array circuit may identify a physicaladdress of a remote register. Based on a received logical address of aremote register, a register management array control circuit may read oridentify, from a register management array, a physical addresscorresponding to a logical address of the remote register. For example,a logical address of a remote register may be used as an index value toread a physical remote register address from a register managementarray.

At 2120, a register management array circuit may read a data segmentfrom a remote register. A total length of a read request may be longerthan the number of bits to be read in a segment of bits read from aremote register. Accordingly, a register management array circuit mayread a segment of data including fewer bits than data requested by aprocessing core. A register management array circuit may communicatewith a register management array circuit via a GPSB.

At 2125, a register management array circuit may determine whether alldata segments have been read from the remote register. A read requestmay include one or more bits indicating a length of data to be writtento a remote register. Based on such a length value, a registermanagement array unit may determine whether all bits of the request datahave been read from a remote register. If fewer than all bits have beenread, method 2100 may return to operation 2120. If all bits have beenread, method 2100 may proceed to operation 2130.

At 2130, a register management circuit may write data to a local coreregister. For example, after reading data from a remote register, aregister management array unit may transmit the requested data that wasread from the remote register to a local core register via a parallelevent bus.

At 2135, a register management array circuit may unset a dirty bitcorresponding to a received logical address of a remote register. Adirty bit may be stored in a dirty bit array. Unsetting a dirty bit mayindicate that a write operation to a remote register has been completed.

Embodiments of the mechanisms disclosed herein may be implemented inhardware, software, firmware, or a combination of such implementationapproaches. Embodiments of the disclosure may be implemented as computerprograms or program code executing on programmable systems comprising atleast one processor, a storage system (including volatile andnon-volatile memory and/or storage elements), at least one input device,and at least one output device.

Program code may be applied to input instructions to perform thefunctions described herein and generate output information. The outputinformation may be applied to one or more output devices, in knownfashion. For purposes of this application, a processing system mayinclude any system that has a processor, such as, for example; a digitalsignal processor (DSP), a microcontroller, an application specificintegrated circuit (ASIC), or a microprocessor.

The program code may be implemented in a high level procedural or objectoriented programming language to communicate with a processing system.The program code may also be implemented in assembly or machinelanguage, if desired. In fact, the mechanisms described herein are notlimited in scope to any particular programming language. In any case,the language may be a compiled or interpreted language.

One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented byrepresentative instructions stored on a machine-readable medium whichrepresents various logic within the processor, which when read by amachine causes the machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniquesdescribed herein. Such representations, known as “IP cores” may bestored on a tangible, machine-readable medium and supplied to variouscustomers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabricationmachines that actually make the logic or processor.

Such machine-readable storage media may include, without limitation,non-transitory, tangible arrangements of articles manufactured or formedby a machine or device, including storage media such as hard disks, anyother type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, compact diskread-only memories (CD-ROMs), compact disk rewritables (CD-RWs), andmagneto-optical disks, semiconductor devices such as read-only memories(ROMs), random access memories (RAMs) such as dynamic random accessmemories (DRAMs), static random access memories (SRAMs), erasableprogrammable read-only memories (EPROMs), flash memories, electricallyerasable programmable read-only memories (EEPROMs), magnetic or opticalcards, or any other type of media suitable for storing electronicinstructions.

Accordingly, embodiments of the disclosure may also includenon-transitory, tangible machine-readable media containing instructionsor containing design data, such as Hardware Description Language (HDL),which defines structures, circuits, apparatuses, processors and/orsystem features described herein. Such embodiments may also be referredto as program products.

In some cases, an instruction converter may be used to convert aninstruction from a source instruction set to a target instruction set.For example, the instruction converter may translate (e.g., using staticbinary translation, dynamic binary translation including dynamiccompilation), morph, emulate, or otherwise convert an instruction to oneor more other instructions to be processed by the core. The instructionconverter may be implemented in software, hardware, firmware, or acombination thereof. The instruction converter may be on processor, offprocessor, or part-on and part-off processor.

Thus, techniques for performing one or more instructions according to atleast one embodiment are disclosed. While certain exemplary embodimentshave been described and shown in the accompanying drawings, it is to beunderstood that such embodiments are merely illustrative of and notrestrictive on other embodiments, and that such embodiments not belimited to the specific constructions and arrangements shown anddescribed, since various other modifications may occur to thoseordinarily skilled in the art upon studying this disclosure. In an areaof technology such as this, where growth is fast and furtheradvancements are not easily foreseen, the disclosed embodiments may bereadily modifiable in arrangement and detail as facilitated by enablingtechnological advancements without departing from the principles of thepresent disclosure or the scope of the accompanying claims.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure include a processor. In anyof the above embodiments, the processor may include a processing core,the processing core including a local core register, a registermanagement array circuit coupled to the local core register, and aremote circuit coupled to the register management array circuit, theremote circuit including a remote register, wherein the registermanagement array circuit includes circuitry to cause the data in thelocal core register to match the data in the remote register. Incombination with any of the above embodiments, the circuitry to causethe data in the local core register to match the data in the remoteregister may include circuitry to receive, from the processing core, awrite request including the data to be written from the local coreregister to the remote register, and a logical address of the remoteregister. In combination with any of the above embodiments, thecircuitry to cause the data in the local core register to match the datain the remote register may include circuitry to identify, based on thelogical address of the remote register, a physical address of the remoteregister, and write, based on the identified physical address of theremote register, the data to the remote register. In combination withany of the above embodiments,the register management array circuit mayinclude a register management array control circuit coupled to aregister management array, the register management array to include aplurality of logical address index values, and a plurality of physicaladdresses, each associated with a respective one of the plurality of thelogical address index values. In combination with any of the aboveembodiments, the circuitry to identify, based on the logical address ofthe remote register, a physical address of the remote register includescircuitry in the register management array control circuit to read fromthe register management array, a physical address corresponding to alogical address of the remote register. In combination with any of theabove embodiments,the circuitry to cause the data in the local coreregister to match the data in the remote register may include circuitryto receive, from the processing core, a read request including a logicaladdress of the remote register, to identify, based on the logicaladdress of the remote register, a physical address of the remoteregister, to read, based on the identified physical address of theremote register, the data from the remote register, and to write thedata to the local core register. In combination with any of the aboveembodiments, the circuitry to receive, from the processing core, a writerequest, may include circuitry to receive a request from the processingcore through a parallel event bus. In combination with any of the aboveembodiments, the circuitry to write, based on the identified physicaladdress of the remote register, the data to the remote register mayinclude circuitry to send the data to the remote register through ageneral purpose sideband interface. In combination with any of the aboveembodiments, the register management array circuit may be located in acore periphery of the processing core.

Embodiments of the present disclosure may include a method. In any ofthe above embodiments, the method may includewriting, by a processingcore, data to be written to a remote register to a local core registerin the processing core, sending a write request to a register managementarray circuit coupled to the local core register, the write requestincluding a logical address of a remote register, identifying, based onthe logical address of the remote register, a physical address of theremote register, and writing, based on the identified physical addressof the remote register, the data to the remote register. In combinationwith any of the above embodiments, identifying, based on the logicaladdress of the remote register, a physical address of the remoteregister may include reading, from a register management array, thephysical address of the remote register using the logical address of theremote register as an index value for the register management array. Incombination with any of the above embodiments, the method may furtherinclude setting, in a dirty bit register, a dirty bit indicating that awrite to the remote register is in progress. In combination with any ofthe above embodiments, writing the data to the remote register mayinclude writing a plurality of segments of the data through a generalpurpose sideband interface. In combination with any of the aboveembodiments, the method may further include determining that fewer thanall of the plurality of data segments have been written to the remoteregister, and based on the determination that fewer than all of theplurality of segments of the data have been written to the remoteregister, writing another one of the plurality of segments of the data.In combination with any of the above embodiments, the method may furtherinclude determining, subsequent to writing another one of the pluralityof segments of data, that all of plurality of segments of the data havebeen written to the remote register, and based on the determination thatall of the plurality segments of the data have been written to theremote register, unsetting a dirty bit indicating that a write is inprogress to the remote register.

Embodiments of the present disclosure may include a register managementarray circuit. In any of the above embodiments, a register managementarray circuit may include a register management array control circuit,where the register management array control circuit is coupled to aprocessing core, the processing core to include a local core register,the register management array control circuit coupled to a remotecircuit, the remote circuit including a remote register, wherein theregister management array control circuit unit comprises circuitry tocause the data in the local core register to match the data in theremote register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, thecircuitry to cause the data in the local core register to match the datain the remote register may include circuitry to receive, from theprocessing core, a write request to include the data to be written fromthe local core register to the remote register, and a logical address ofthe remote register. In combination with any of the above embodiments,the circuitry to cause the data in the local core register to match thedata in the remote register may include circuitry to identify, based onthe logical address of the remote register, a physical address of theremote register, and write, based on the identified physical address ofthe remote register, the data to the remote register. In combinationwith any of the above embodiments, the register management array circuitmay further include a register management array to include a pluralityof logical address index values, and a plurality of physical addressesassociated with one of the plurality of the logical address index value.In combination with any of the above embodiments, the circuitry toidentify, based on the logical address of the remote register, aphysical address of the remote register may include circuitry to read,from the register management array, a physical address corresponding toa the logical address of the remote register. In combination with any ofthe above embodiments, the circuitry to cause the data in the local coreregister to match the data in the remote register may include circuitryto receive, from the processing core, a read request including a logicaladdress of the remote register, identify, based on the logical addressof the remote register, a physical address of the remote register,read,based on the identified physical address of the remote register, thedata from the remote register, and write the data to the local coreregister. In combination with any of the above embodiments, thecircuitry to receive, from the processing core, a write request, mayinclude circuitry to receive a request from the processing core througha parallel event bus. In combination with any of the above embodiments,the circuitry to write, based on the identified physical address of theremote register, the data to the remote register may include circuitryto send the data to the remote register through a general purposesideband interface. In combination with any of the above embodiments,the register management array circuit may be located in a core peripheryof the processing core.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure include an apparatus. In anyof the above embodiments, the apparatus may include a processing coremeans, the processing core means including a local core register means,a register management array circuit means coupled to the local coreregister means, and a remote circuit means coupled to the registermanagement array circuit means, the remote circuit means including aremote register means, wherein the register management array circuitmeans includes circuitry to cause the data in the local core registermeans to match the data in the remote register means. In combinationwith any of the above embodiments, the circuitry to cause the data inthe local core register means to match the data in the remote registermeans may include circuitry to receive, from the processing core means,a write request including the data to be written from the local coreregister mean to the remote register means, and a logical address of theremote register means. In combination with any of the above embodiments,the circuitry to cause the data in the local core register means tomatch the data in the remote register means may include circuitry toidentify, based on the logical address of the remote register means, aphysical address of the remote register means, and write, based on theidentified physical address of the remote register means, the data tothe remote register means. In combination with any of the aboveembodiments,the register management array circuit means may include aregister management array control circuit means coupled to a registermanagement array means, the register management array means to include aplurality of logical address index values, and a plurality of physicaladdresses, each associated with a respective one of the plurality of thelogical address index values. In combination with any of the aboveembodiments, the circuitry to identify, based on the logical address ofthe remote register means, a physical address of the remote registermean may include circuitry in the register management array controlcircuit means to read from the register management array means, aphysical address corresponding to a logical address of the remoteregister means. In combination with any of the above embodiments,thecircuitry to cause the data in the local core register means to matchthe data in the remote register means may include circuitry to receive,from the processing core means, a read request including a logicaladdress of the remote register means, to identify, based on the logicaladdress of the remote register means, a physical address of the remoteregister means, to read, based on the identified physical address of theremote register means, the data from the remote register means, and towrite the data to the local core register means. In combination with anyof the above embodiments, the circuitry to receive, from the processingcore means, a write request, may include circuitry to receive a requestfrom the processing core mean through a parallel event bus means. Incombination with any of the above embodiments, the circuitry to write,based on the identified physical address of the remote register means,the data to the remote register means may include circuitry to send thedata to the remote register means through a general purpose sidebandinterface means. In combination with any of the above embodiments, theregister management array circuit means may be located in a coreperiphery of the processing core means.

What is claimed is:
 1. A processor, comprising: a processing core, theprocessing core including a local core register; a register managementarray circuit coupled to the local core register; and a remote circuitcoupled to the register management array circuit, the remote circuitincluding a remote register; wherein the register management arraycircuit includes circuitry to cause the data in the local core registerto match the data in the remote register.
 2. The processor of claim 1,wherein the circuitry to cause the data in the local core register tomatch the data in the remote register includes circuitry to: receive,from the processing core, a write request including: the data to bewritten from the local core register to the remote register; and alogical address of the remote register; identify, based on the logicaladdress of the remote register, a physical address of the remoteregister; and write, based on the identified physical address of theremote register, the data to the remote register.
 3. The processor ofclaim 2, wherein: the register management array circuit includes: aregister management array control circuit coupled to a registermanagement array; the register management array to include: a pluralityof logical address index values; and a plurality of physical addresses,each associated with a respective one of the plurality of the logicaladdress index values; and the circuitry to identify, based on thelogical address of the remote register, a physical address of the remoteregister includes circuitry in the register management array controlcircuit to read from the register management array, a physical addresscorresponding to a logical address of the remote register.
 4. Theprocessor of claim 1, wherein the circuitry to cause the data in thelocal core register to match the data in the remote register includescircuitry to: receive, from the processing core, a read requestincluding a logical address of the remote register; identify, based onthe logical address of the remote register, a physical address of theremote register; read, based on the identified physical address of theremote register, the data from the remote register; and write the datato the local core register.
 5. The processor of claim 2, wherein thecircuitry to receive, from the processing core, a write request,includes circuitry to receive a request from the processing core througha parallel event bus.
 6. The processor of claim 2, wherein the circuitryto write, based on the identified physical address of the remoteregister, the data to the remote register includes circuitry to send thedata to the remote register through a general purpose sidebandinterface.
 7. The processor of claim 1, wherein the register managementarray circuit is located in a core periphery of the processing core. 8.A method, comprising: writing, by a processing core, data to be writtento a remote register to a local core register in the processing core;sending a write request to a register management array circuit coupledto the local core register, the write request including a logicaladdress of a remote register; identifying, based on the logical addressof the remote register, a physical address of the remote register; andwriting, based on the identified physical address of the remoteregister, the data to the remote register.
 9. The method of claim 8,wherein identifying, based on the logical address of the remoteregister, a physical address of the remote register includes reading,from a register management array, the physical address of the remoteregister using the logical address of the remote register as an indexvalue for the register management array.
 10. The method of claim 8,further comprising, setting, in a dirty bit register, a dirty bitindicating that a write to the remote register is in progress.
 11. Themethod of claim 8, wherein, writing the data to the remote registerincludes writing a plurality of segments of the data through a generalpurpose sideband interface.
 12. The method of claim 11, furthercomprising: determining that fewer than all of the plurality of datasegments have been written to the remote register; and based on thedetermination that fewer than all of the plurality of segments of thedata have been written to the remote register, writing another one ofthe plurality of segments of the data.
 13. The method of claim 12,further comprising: determining, subsequent to writing another one ofthe plurality of segments of data, that all of plurality of segments ofthe data have been written to the remote register; and based on thedetermination that all of the plurality segments of the data have beenwritten to the remote register, unsetting a dirty bit indicating that awrite is in progress to the remote register.
 14. A register managementarray circuit, comprising: a register management array control circuit,where the register management array control circuit is coupled to aprocessing core, the processing core to include a local core register;the register management array control circuit coupled to a remotecircuit, the remote circuit including a remote register; wherein theregister management array control circuit comprises circuitry to causethe data in the local core register to match the data in the remoteregister.
 15. The register management array circuit of claim 14, whereinthe circuitry to cause the data in the local core register to match thedata in the remote register includes circuitry to: receive, from theprocessing core, a write request to include: the data to be written fromthe local core register to the remote register; and a logical address ofthe remote register; identify, based on the logical address of theremote register, a physical address of the remote register; and write,based on the identified physical address of the remote register, thedata to the remote register.
 16. The register management array circuitof claim 15, further comprising: a register management array to include:a plurality of logical address index values; and a plurality of physicaladdresses associated with one of the plurality of the logical addressindex value; and wherein the circuitry to identify, based on the logicaladdress of the remote register, a physical address of the remoteregister includes circuitry to read, from the register management array,a physical address corresponding to a the logical address of the remoteregister.
 17. The register management array circuit of claim 14, whereinthe circuitry to cause the data in the local core register to match thedata in the remote register includes circuitry to: receive, from theprocessing core, a read request including a logical address of theremote register; identify, based on the logical address of the remoteregister, a physical address of the remote register; read, based on theidentified physical address of the remote register, the data from theremote register; and write the data to the local core register.
 18. Theregister management array circuit of claim 15, wherein the circuitry toreceive, from the processing core, a write request, includes circuitryto receive a request from the processing core through a parallel eventbus.
 19. The register management array circuit of claim 15, wherein thecircuitry to write, based on the identified physical address of theremote register, the data to the remote register includes circuitry tosend the data to the remote register through a general purpose sidebandinterface.
 20. The register management array circuit of claim 14,wherein the register management array circuit is located in a coreperiphery of the processing core.